Both of these remappings encourage and repel the relocation of large numbers of peoples.

Funny how you lose sight of some things and memory others.

I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is-a politician.

We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race -- scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.

Just Imagine. No illness. Ever. No pain. No aging or frailty of any kind. No loss or grief or tears. And obviously no more dying, not even if the stars shattered into motes and the moon disintegrated like a corpse beneath the sea.

In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard enough, could sugar the living and quiet the dead.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

Grab this land! Take it, hold it, my brothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it, twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, buy it, sell it, own it, build it, multiply it, and pass it on -- can you hear me? Pass it on!

When I went into the publishing industry, many women talked about the difficulty they had in persuading their families to let them go to college. They educated the boys, and the girls had to struggle.

Whatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses -- young loving.

My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.

I get angry about things, then go on and work.