It was important, I know, for my father as a product of his times not to be vulnerable, so he chose, and I can’t say that I blame him, to live his life rather than create it.

The current Pandora’s box of revelations about sexual crimes committed within the walls of so many of America’s families reveals the nuclear family to be cruelly, aptly named. Patriarchy, sexism, and the culture of capitalism have created a “family” that too often is no more than a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Novelists have to love humanity to write anything worthwhile. Poets have to love themselves.

Surviving and believing in tomorrow is just a habit I can’t break.

I quickly learned that motherhood was a high wire act sometimes performed without a net.

Ironically, white America will catapult books about race to the top of the best-seller list, even as racism remains a national open wound. Obsession ain’t solution, however, because reading even at its most intense and verisimilitudinous is vicarious, and once you close the book you’re off the hook.

Love is going to replace life and from then on it’s all smooth sailing. Love will replace life.

Imagination bound us stronger than love. Within its limitless borders we launched ships and love affairs, discovered lost worlds, made buildings and babies, found husbands, wrote letters and Broadway plays. We made ourselves up everyday.

Racism is a virus. And since nobody’s really looking too hard for a cure it reproduces itself over and over again.

I am a stranger to half measures.