Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
I like marriage. The idea.
I’m not entangled in shaping my work according to other people’s views of how I should have done it.
One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don’t write that frequently gives what you do write its power.
I can’t explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn’t really be a writer.
To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.
Writing is really a way of thinking – not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.
Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn’t have each other you had nothing.
No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.
The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.
But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.
It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years.
I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.
I’m interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.
What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.
I write the way women have babies. You don’t know it’s going to be like that. If you did, there’s no way you would go through with it.
Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.