Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.

Writing is almost a place of dreams for me, and I don't have to give up anything to do it.

At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.

We born dyin'...But you ask a man an' he talk like he gonna live forevah.

I like to read either in motion or in water... I am happiest reading in the bathtub.

I think that people don't know how to do anything anymore. My father was a janitor. He could take a car apart and put it back together. He could build a house in the back yard. Today, if you ask people what they know, they say, 'I know how to hire someone.'

There are as many kinds of love as there are flowers and bugs put together but men and women and their needs are all the same.