That is how I came to think that heavy and hard was the beginning of living, real living; and though I might not end up with a mark on my cheek, I ha….

I was just looking at moving to Cambridge, and a house I was looking at cost a million dollars. Because somehow, that's what a house costs. And I was….

The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it'….

When I write a book, I hope to be beyond mortal by the time I'm finished..

On their way to freedom, some people find riches, some people find death..

I'm sometimes afraid I'll cross a line and it'll be difficult to come back, say, to dinner..

I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life in a greeting card - the kind that ….

At the time I was taught to read, it was an Eden-like time of my life. My mother adored me. Everyone adored me. So I associate reading with enormous ….

The strange thing about my life is that I came to America at about the time when racial attitudes were changing. This was a big help to me. Also, the….

I've written a book about my mother, and I don't remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something ….

If I describe a person's physical appearance in my writing, which I often do, especially in fiction, I never say someone is "black" or "white." I may….

Most of the nations that have serious gardening cultures have, or had, empires. You can't have this luxury of pleasure without somebody paying for it….

The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong..

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance..

A great piece of literature encompasses all that is and all that will be..

The thing to remember about the Declaration of Independence and the profession of freedom is that it was written by people who were quite free and wh….