I don't wait to be struck by lightning and I don't need certain slants of light in order to be able to write.

Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time.

New York is the last true city.

I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color - light, black, in-between - as the marker for race is really an error.

Something that is loved is never lost.

There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning.

The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.