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

Think of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I don't see those separations too much, between what is artistic and what is political. Maybe in painting... no, I don't even believe that.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are

I don't think I knew any of my father's friends - male friends - by their real names. I remember them only by their nicknames.

What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?

This word "LOVE" - discredited, "clicheed" - can be restored and love, the instinct, the impulse to care for somebody in the hope that somebody will care for you - plus our language, the language, a language - is about all we have. With everything else going on, this is what makes us, what keeps us human.