I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.
Your life has to consist of more than 'Black people should unite.' You hope they do, but not twenty-four hours a day.
I was one of the first three black students to go to an all-white school in Tennessee.
I don't mind being criticized. I enjoy being criticized personally, not by rumor.
I found my grandmother dead. It shook me up. I got up to make her breakfast, and I knew it was strange that she wasn't stirring. I went in to wake her, and she was laying in rigor mortis, and I'm done. I called next door, and the kid picked up the phone, and I was so wild, he dropped it.
I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.
