"What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?"
- Toni Morrison
"There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."
"All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in., March 9, 1998]"
"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was."
"What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them."
"The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than re..."
"How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn't love it. The minute they arrive at the train..."
"Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf."
"I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life."
"I'm a Midwesterner, and everyone in Ohio is excited. I'm also a New Yorker, and a New Jerseyan, and an American, plus I'm an African-American, and a woman. I know it seems like I'm spreading like alga..."