They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.

It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

Depression is anger slowed down; panic is grief speeded up.

Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

Writing is a hellish task, best snuck up on, whacked on the head, robbed and left for dead.

Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice.

Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.

I want to be fighting for a society accountable towards its citizens.

We say in a democracy that good ideas will drive out bad ones, so if the good ones aren't there, we're left with the bad ones

It's nice not to be too boring.

A lot of black men have problems being emotionally vulnerable because of the boundaries and parameters that have been put onto them by society.

The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.

Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.

I agree that we should go back to the moon and on to Mars. We should treat all objects in the solar system, including comets and asteroids, as exploration targets.

I'd like to record somewhere really different. Rent a really big house and get a mobile in and set up in the dining room. Maybe New England; it'd be nice in September or October.

What I value most next to eternity is time.

The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period.