I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.

I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.

Let your face speak what's in your heart. When my kids walk in the room my face says I'm glad to see them.

You looking good." "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.