"The human body is a mystery."

"I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs, you have the privilege of not being a slave.'"

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."

"I'm not interested in being a black writer. I'm interested in being a writer who happens to be black."

"A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity."