In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Liberation means you don't have to be silenced.

Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.