Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations.

We read about how Ajax and Achilles will die for each other, but very little about the friendship of women.

It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.