Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

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

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.

In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.

No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.

Love is never any better than the lover.