I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

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

Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.

There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning.

Our ancestors are an ever widening circle of hope.

The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.