To be one woman, truly, wholly, is to be all women. Tend one garden and you will birth worlds.

Just being in a room with myself is almost more stimulation than I can bear.

Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.

I write a lot by sound. One sound leads me to another. These sounds aren't random; they have their own logic.

In communist countries, you execute your poets. In the free world, the poets execute themselves.

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.

Women have waited millions of years, growing separate as another species, with visions and priorities no man-words, no man-measurements can comprehend.

If you can be anything else but a writer, be it.

I have a great ability to improvise verbally and I am very funny on a dime.

Women are defined by their biography, and men are sacrosanct from their biography.

As a citizen of the post-historical variety, I am in continual mourning and prepared for worse.

My idea of success has little to do with fame. I just wanted to know if I could play with the best musicians in the business.

Desire is always followed by boredom. And only love can defeat boredom. Love with a capital L

I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.

How can you truly know what success is, if you’ve never experienced failure?

The challenge is to become part of the struggle, to make a positive difference.

Greatness has nothing to do with results or with success.

Everyone wears an invisible sign that reads "Notice me. Make me feel important."

What you see, isn't always what you get

Mystery books. I must read a hundred a year. . . I just wish some of them were harder to figure out.

The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English. Then I'd be able to charge you an upgrade fee every time I add new letters like N and T.