One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person..

All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense.….

One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to h….

Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's so angry." If I write about a ma….

I like to be in my pajamas all day. Sometimes I don't wash for days because I like to read and sit around. I like to eat in bed..

I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a hindrance..

I come from the small island of Antigua and I always wanted to write; I just didn't know that it was possible..

the first step in claiming yourself is anger. You get mad. And you can't do anything before you get angry. And I recommend getting very angry to ever….

I know that the fantastic amount of profit that people want to make on anything is damaging. And that none of us seem able to resist it..

The history of race relations in America is very different than something like the Holocaust..

Gardening is really an extended form of reading, of history and philosophy. The garden itself has become like writing a book. I walk around and walk ….

None of us seem to think that we should draw a line under what would be a satisfactory amount of wealth..

I wish that I could love someone so much that I would die from it..

America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be fr….

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of ….

In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other..

I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse, for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedie….

Here I am, a product of something really vicious, product of the Atlantic slave trade. And yet, I give nary a thought to some of the awful things hap….

When once I got to America I fell in love with hippie culture, and I've always wanted to live in the country and grow organic vegetables..

I used to want to be a backup singer. Not a lead singer, because I really can't sing..

Sometimes when someone says something stupid, my friends and I just read the reviews out loud and collapse with laughter at the stupidity of it all..