The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

Anger is a tiger that can eat you alive if you are not careful.

Why do we have this desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy?

To change your mind under the direction of the wisdom of the heart is a brush stroke on the masterpiece you are delivering to the world.

It (taking photographs) is all about longingwithout longing-no pictures at all.

I would love to work with Sir Anthony Hopkins. How and why that would happen in a comedy I'm not sure - why he would be dragged over to my side, or I'd be be dragged over to his side.

Black women rock the cradle, and whoever rocks the cradle rocks the future.

I don't think half my stuff would be funny if the audience didn't feel at least a little bit safe that it's not how I truly feel.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

I'm definitely preoccupied by thinking I'm just a biological thing. I want to feel that there's more, but so often I'm reminded of how we're just like baboons, basically.