The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.
More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark?
All important things are hard.
Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It’s not having no responsibilitie s; it’s choosing the ones you want.
When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.
Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem.
I don’t do the things other people call “play.”
And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.
I don’t think one parent can raise a child. I don’t think two parents can raise a child. You really need the whole village.
I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don’t try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won’t work. Just wait, it will come.
Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.
Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.
Let your face speak what’s in your heart.
When a man angers you, he conquers you.
Long before I was a success, my parents made me feel like I could be one.
Make a difference, does it? You stay the night here snake get you.
Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.
Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?