“So I see no reason why, just because a couple of womenfolk have kicked the bucket, people should start writing religion about them.”

“If I should ever have children I will tell them what religion they are so they can start learning about it at an early age. Twelve is very late to learn.Sincerely, Margaret Ann Simon”

“One who kicks up one's heels should not kick the bucket.”

“Why do we writers write? Is it because we have something to say, or is it because we just do? I write because I can, because I just do, and because I am a writer, and so I write.”

“Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction. If not so, why do so many couples who start the evening at dinner wind up in bed?”

“Throughout my life as I’ve sought to become a published writer of speculative fiction, my strongest detractors and discouragers have been other African Americans. These were people who had, like generations before them, bought into the mythology of racism: black people don’t read. Black people can’t write. Black people have no talents other than singing and dancing and sports and crime. No one wants to read about black people, so don’t write about them. No one wants to write about black people, which is why you never see a black protagonist. Even if you self-publish, black people won’t support you. And if you aim for traditional publication, no one who matters — that is, white people — will buy your work.(A corollary of all this: there is only black and white. Nothing else matters.)Having swallowed these ideas, people regurgitated them at me at nearly every turn. And for a time, I swallowed them, too. As a black woman, I believed I wasn’t supposed to be a writer. Simultaneously I believed I was supposed to write about black people — and only black people. And only within a strictly limited set of topics deemed relevant to black people, because only black people would ever read anything I’d written. Took me years after I started writing to create a protagonist who looked like me. And then once I started doing so, it took me years to write a protagonist who was something different.”