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

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.

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

It's bliss when you give up all that stuff that separates you from other human beings. It's hard, but you break down all that stuff.

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.

Now what? All the battles feminists won about not being a sex object, not being evaluated based on these things, that now other generations are wallowing in, the extremes they go to, to look sexually attractive? It's stunning how things that one fought desperately for are just being tossed aside with aplomb.

Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission.