“This year I'm a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?”

“The future was as unfathomable as the black holes between the stars at night.”

“If the town were a black hole, I was the helpless star being sucked into oblivion. It was an oblivion I craved.”

“The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth.”

“Like a dying star, grace dissipates in a final burst of pale light, and is then engulfed by the black hole of "ungrace.”

“I'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial -- a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles -- a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”