“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”

Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing – a hand worker in an era of mass production.

Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.

If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.

Shouting has never made me understand anything.

Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone now lives.

I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing – not just a waiting.

A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it’s the secret to good sex.

Art is a form of consciousness.

Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.

If one hasn’t a horse, one is one’s own horse.

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.

I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

When I see the leadership roles black women are taking today I am very encouraged.

We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply and so many of our old ideas disparage.

There are billions of people in the world, and every one of them is special. No one else in the world is like you.

Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.