I'm a writer in the world. I translate the confusion that I might feel, the dread that I know I feel, moving towards some other place, moving away from puny language, from all that dread into some other kind of language.

Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.

Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.

Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.

I have the wonderful pleasure of finishing the book and closing it. And I don't read them later.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended.