Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city. |
No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything. |
I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons. |
I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about. |
At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. |
It's been mentioned or suggested that Paradise will not be well studied, because it's about this unimportant intellectual topic, which is religion. |
Make a difference about something other than yourselves. |
She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind. |
I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway. |
You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone. |
Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network. |
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. |
I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it. |
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. |
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. |
Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form. |
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives. |
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it. |
My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children. |
When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same. |