If you just sit there, and you’re a writer, you’re bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.
I think life is difficult and that’s that. I am not at all – absolutely not at all – interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am not interested in the pursuit of positivity. I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite.
One doesn’t have to pursue unhappiness. It comes to you. You come into the world screaming. You cry when you’re born because your lungs expand. You breathe. I think that’s really kind of significant. You come into the world crying, and it’s a sign that you’re alive.
I didn’t really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn’t see how it was possible not to like me!
I’m always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something.
I like cooking, but I think someone else ought to do the dishes.
People don’t make changes because things are wonderful.
Time is the element that controls the consciousness, the very being of the people.
A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can’t do anything else, and then you have another job.
Tomorrow exists even though I may not exist in it.
What distinguished my life from my brother’s is that my mother didn’t like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her.
I used to want to be a backup singer. Not a lead singer, because I really can’t sing.
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’s the wrong thing. It’s not a profession.
I suppose you could say I love outlaw American culture.
I loved Charlotte Bronte when I was little, and I wanted to be Charlotte Bronte the way people want to be a princess.
I’ve never gotten used to winter and never will.
I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I’m alone in the world and I’m just sort of abandoned.
One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.
No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.
The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.