Boredom means you develop your own interior life.

For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don't like.

I used to think that the feeling of alienation that I would have was just me, but I realise that it's also a symptom of the modern world.

American musicals are, for the most part, about boys, or boyish pursuits and aspirations - the fantasy of freedom and resolve - and those dreams have little to do with the reality of most black women's lives.

Although the civil-rights movement did a lot to change how black life was dramatized on the American stage in the fifties and sixties, white composers and lyricists often still rely on familiar tropes when it comes to representing black women in musicals.

I think, what's the point of writing a book that you would get in one sitting?

I think that you don't really want to write a book that doesn't really move people and doesn't get them to think.

I don't know what else teaches you as much as writing. Perhaps reading. So if I don't have one or the other in the course of the day, I feel old.

I'm attracted to people who work their little plot of land and cultivate it and cultivate it.

I suppose that there are many novels that are set during the summer because it's a lonely time of year. Friends come and go, comfort comes and goes, which makes it a perfect time of year to indulge in melancholia.