I am interested in risk, in art as well as in the realm of politics.

Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I’m as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.

I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

People who want their love easy don't really want love.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.

You are human and mortal

Mausoleum n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.

Lord Birkenhead is very clever but sometimes his brains go to his head. All zeal runs down. What replaces it? Intellectualism.

I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level.

A spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after.

I have a very primitive sense that if I just turn on a radio or the television, that somebody's playing that stuff for me.

When did I stop being me?

One of the great things about African-Americans is that we've always had this attitude: We make do with what we got. It comes from our ancestors being slaves.

I don't know what it means to be out there against the Olympics.