I always tell people, if a young girl read "Beloved" as her first novel, she'd have to kill either herself or her mother, because in "Beloved" you have a mother killing their children. This is not something a child would accept very easily. And would never understand.

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.

If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning.

Black men of our day were never told, The sky's the limit. ... We could aspire to Joe Louis but never Henry Ford.

Love makes you blind to your own survival. And if it doesn't then it's not love at all.

My father cared about the world he lived in, and so he admitted his confusion about his place in America because he didn't want me to make the same mistake in my life.

I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.