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.

True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.

I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.

A bestseller is a book that non-book buyers buy

The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did.

There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.

I think there's data, and then there's information that comes from data, and then there's knowledge that comes from information. And then, after knowledge, there is wisdom. I am interested in how to get from data to wisdom.