I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.

I can see criticizing, complaining, protesting - anything but choosing not to vote. Too many people died for us not to vote.

Criticism shouldn't be a performance that upstages the work it's talking about.

Home is the place where there is somebody who does not wish you any pain.

You can get away with anything as long as it works.

It's not nothing when you're abroad and you don't have a washing machine.

People from Europe and people from Africa encountered one another long before the invention of "Europe" and "Africa" and "white people" and "black people."

The rise of fascism in Europe sent most Americans home. Some black American communists who had emigrated to the Soviet Union perished in Stalin's purges of the late 1930s.

If you're bored, your readers will be bored. If you're faking it, you won't get the kind of readers you want.

I can see Obama trying to be the president who suggests solutions for everyone who has experienced economic hardship.

Europe was a very contentious subject in literature and yet jazz musicians still depended on Europe. Now it's not such a big deal.

The river flows at its own sweet will, but the flood is bound in the two banks. If it were not thus bound, its freedom would be wasted.

We had so much fun in Ghana and they are really lovely people.

I didn't want to do a book just to do a book. I wanted to do a book that, if you should read it, you might take one thing from it. Until that was clear in my mind, I wasn't going to do one.

A director who gets $150,000 per year from a company and needs the money is not independent.

When I was 8, my favorite toy was a stapler. My brother was afraid of me.

You have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same political party and strike and vote together, and the hour you do that, the world is yours.

The Lord's hand in in our lives; if we will but feel for it, in the darkness, we can grasp it and be lifted thereby.

When a woman didn't enjoy it, she leaves early in the morning. Those who had a nice time will wait until the sun comes out, requests breakfast and taxi money.

In life, it's between choosing risk and striving for greatness, or risking nothing and being certain of mediocrity

I probably just want to leave a trace of myself behind in this world.