Deep, deep trouble. Can't rival the dead for love. Lose every time.

Of course I'm a black writer... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

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

It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.

She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live.

Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature.

Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?