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

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.

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.

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.

Here. There. Everywhere. Somewhere. Home.

His head was pounding and his vision skewed in some way and he was vaguely amazed at being alive and not sure that it was worth it.

A milli-Helen is enough beauty to launch exactly one ship

I'm not much of a planner. I set a goal and there really is nothing else... no plan B.

God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.

How you spend your time defines who you are.

Potentially, America is really the greatest, but it's not yet, I don't think. It's too much like an old-fashioned empire, waving the stick and dropping too many bombs on too many people.

Shut up, already. Just once, could I get a demon with no vocal cords? (Anonymous) At least they’re not puking on us this time. (Wynter) Small favor that. (Anonymous)

We all love the environment, but we have placed creatures above people. A rat is a rat.

Evil, once manfully fronted, ceases to be evil; there is generous battle-hope in place of dead, passive misery; the evil itself has become a kind of good.