Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever." [Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]

All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?

I'm a writer in the world. I translate the confusion that I might feel, the dread that I know I feel, moving towards some other place, moving away from puny language, from all that dread into some other kind of language.

Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing.