True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.

It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment

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.

Sex is difficult to write about because it's just not sexy enough. The only way to write about it is not to write much. Let the reader bring his own sexuality into the text. A writer I usually admire has written about sex in the most off-putting way. There is just too much information.

What I'm doing ain't about hating White people. It's about loving us.