“People don't care how smart woman is as long as she's charming and gay and pretty.”

“James tells the crowd that the river is just a few yards from where we stand is all we ever need to believe in. One white woman asks how old James is and I tell her he's seven and she tells me that he's so smart for an Indian boy. James hears this and tells the white woman that she's pretty smart for an old white woman.”

“Don't worry about how pretty (the story) sounds, how lilting it is, and the imagery, and the metaphor, all that. Most readers don't care. It's the people in your book that matter.”

“I don’t care how smart you are. You’ll never understand how little you really know until you’ve had a woman.”

“I don't care if you wear white to your coming-out party and pretend to be a virgin, but you're gay, Kit. G-A-Y. Gay! So gay, fairies everywhere will weep that your machismo avoided their gaydar for so long.”

“The bottom line in both cases is that people don't change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into something she's not.”