I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.

We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us.

A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.

What I'm doing ain't about hating White people. It's about loving us.

When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?

I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.

All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.