She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?

Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.

And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.

Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained.

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.

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.