I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.

But the fruit that can fall without shaking indeed is too mellow for me.

Once in the midst of a seemingly endless winter, I discovered within myself an invincible spring.

Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak are extinguished by it.

My parents taught me I could be anything in the world I wanted to be.

What is real is beyond all reach.

In one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.

I love life and people, so I guess I want to help anyone I can live the fullest, most wonderful life possible.

When you are here and now, sitting totally, not jumping ahead, the miracle has happened. To be in the moment is the miracle.

When I was in Russia I found that I thought I was going to give these people that I was interviewing a whole bunch of choice in terms of what they could drink while we were chatting.

One year to me is just a small section of life. For most humans, one year is a long time and so much happens. But for the universe, it's very temporary.