I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.

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.

You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.

A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.

Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.