The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.

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

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.

My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.

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