“I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?”

“I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.”

“My life has been one great big joke,A dance that's walked,A song that's spoke,I laugh so hard I almost choke,When I think about myself.”

“We love and lose in China, we weep on England's moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores. We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine. In minor ways we differ, in major we're the same.”

“In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.”

“I don’t know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they’re telling the truth. The fact is they’re using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they’re telling the truth about the human being—what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other.”

“I’ve got a magic charmThat I keep up my sleeve,I can walk the ocean floorAnd never have to breathe.”