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" I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels. "

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" I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn't in her. "

" So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding. "

" You cannot see the changes that you're dreaming about, because they're internal. "

" Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories. "

" I start each book when it's ready and never before. "

" It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are. "

" I have such respect for 'Democracy Now!' "

" I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it's almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves. "

" Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft. "

" Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors. "

" I consider the fact that thousands of children die each day from starvation and a lack of medicine a crisis for humanity and a problem we must collectively attempt to solve. "

" Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything. "

" Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us. "

" A good model of how to 'work with the enemy' internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. "

" I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it's a disaster that we have moved so far from nature. "

" I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing. "

" I don't generally read reviews. "

" I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there's a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they're not the same, ever again. "

" I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book. "

" As long as the people don't fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn't stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful... but so frightening. "

" Part of my ancestry is Cherokee. And in that tradition, you become an adult when you're 52. "

" Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you're getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand. "

" And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read. "

" As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that's fine. But even if you don't quote-unquote make it, you're fine if you've given it your whole heart and soul. "

" It is important to remember yourself. "

" In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid. "

" I'm entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they're thinking and who they are and who's hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what's the story, really? "

" My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father's head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap. "

" Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it. "

" Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me. "