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" In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. "

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" Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader. "

" I get angry about things, then go on and work. "

" Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war. "

" The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book. "

" If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it. "

" I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it. "

" I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway. "

" Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all. "

" If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression. "

" No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything. "

" I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons. "

" My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children. "

" I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort. "

" I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man. "

" Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network. "

" I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people. "

" Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth. "

" All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. "

" Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form. "

" At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. "

" Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another. "

" In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color. "

" There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people. "

" Make a difference about something other than yourselves. "

Make A Difference

" I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it. "

" Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city. "

" If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it. "

" Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable. "

" I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes. "

" I like marriage. The idea. "