“Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life.”

“Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.”

“Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.”

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”

“Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.”

“Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work.”

“We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.”

“I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.”

“I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one spending my life making the same mistake over and over again or if that's simply human. Do we all tend toward a single besetting sin?”

“True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.”