When you think of sexual liberation, which women wanted to have or not have children, which is the choice, not a command, and other kinds of things they wanted in their relationships with their husbands, or partners or what have you, became for subsequent generations some license that they themselves feel, that is absolutely demeaning and mean younger and younger and younger.

I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

Intimacy is extremely important to me and I want it to be extremely important to the readers.

I don't think I knew any of my father's friends - male friends - by their real names. I remember them only by their nicknames.

It seems to me everything Shakespeare did was political.

What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?

You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.