There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much..

Once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are a human being, and all the things that….

I love planting. I love digging holes, putting plants in, tapping them in. And I love weeding, but I don't like tidying up the garden afterwards..

I wouldn't mind being labeled as "angry," if it wasn't used once again to denigrate and belittle..

But no longer could I aks God what to do, since the answer, I was sure, would not suit me. I could do what suited me know, as long as I could pay for….

The resistance to my work, and to my way of writing, has been there from the beginning. The first things I wrote were these short short stories colle….

I am not aware of anything below my neck. I live completely in my head..

The African-American is often used, and has conspired with the rest of America to be used, as a diversion from America's problems. I wish African-Ame….

Had the Holocaust happened in Tahiti or the Congo, as it has; had it happened in South America, as it has; had it happened in the West Indies, as it ….

That the world I was in could be soft, lovely, and nourishing was more than I could bear, and so I stood there and wept, for I didn't want to love on….

I swim in a shaft of light, upside down, and I can see myself clearly, through and through, from every angle. Perhaps I stand on the brink of a great….

It's too easy to say this or that is "race," and that has been a vehicle for an incredible amount of wrong in the world..

I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned..

Everything I do is because of writing. If I go for a walk, it's because I'm thinking of writing. I go look at flowers, I go look at the garden, I go ….

When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself..

I've never let the criticism deter me..

My disappointments stand up and grow ever taller. They will not be lost to me..

I suppose you could say I love outlaw American culture..

Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy..

A piece of cloth that is called "linen" has more validity than calling you and me "black" or "negro." "Cotton" has more validity as cotton than yours….

I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fic….