I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.

When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.

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

This word "LOVE" - discredited, "clicheed" - can be restored and love, the instinct, the impulse to care for somebody in the hope that somebody will care for you - plus our language, the language, a language - is about all we have. With everything else going on, this is what makes us, what keeps us human.

What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

In my mother's church, everybody read the Bible and it was mostly about music. My mother had the most beautiful voice I have ever heard in my life. She could sing anything - classical, jazz, blues, opera. And people came from long distances to that little church she went to - African Methodist Episcopal, the AME church she belonged to - just hear her.