How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn't love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.

It seems to me everything Shakespeare did was political.

I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.

Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.

Beginning 'Beloved' with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city.

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

Evil is so seductive. It needs to grind you up and make you its slave.