The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.

Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.

Most of our lives are spent in little towns, little towns all throughout the country. That's where we live. And that's where the juices come from and that's where we made it, not made it in terms of success but made who we are.

I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color - light, black, in-between - as the marker for race is really an error.

We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us.

Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.

But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.