The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.

My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.

My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not vagrants - hanging from trees as a child was traumatic for him.

Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.