“Too many writers are trying to write with too shallow an education. Whether they go to college or not is immaterial...a good writer needs a sense of the history of literature to be successful as a writer.”

“If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.”

“If writers were good business men, they'd have too much sense to be writers.”

“Read a lot. But read as a writer, to see how other writers are doing it. And make your knowledge of literature in English as deep and broad as you can. In workshops, writers are often told to read what is being written now, but if that is all you read, you are limiting yourself. You need to get a good overall sense of English literary history, so you can write out of that knowledge.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“I had to educate him that there was no such thing as writer's block, that writers write when they write, and when they don't, they don't.”