“The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.”

“Whenever I'm with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.”

“No person, place, or thing has any power over me, for I am the only thinker in my mind. I create my own reality and everyone in it.”

“Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.”

“I am really Chloe Anthony Wofford. That's who I am. I have been writing under this other person's name. I write some things now as Chloe Wofford, private things. I regret having called myself Toni Morrison when I published my first novel, The Bluest Eye.”

“If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.”