When People Say You're Charming You Are

One Day I Was Living Silently In A Personal Hell, Without Anyone To Tell What I Felt, Without Even Knowing That The Feelings I Had Were Possible To Have; And Then One Day I Was Not Living Like That At All. I Had Begun To See The Past Like This: There Is A Line; You Can Draw It Yourself, Or Sometimes It Gets Drawn For You; Either Way, There It Is, Your Past, A Collection Of People You Used To Be And Things You Used To Do. Your Past Is The Person You No Longer Are, The Situations You Are No Longer In.

It's Very Funny, American Society: White Culture Can Do All Sorts Of Things And Get Away With It, But The Minute A Black Person Does It, It's Interpreted In Some Way.

The Families Of Rabbits Or Woodchucks Will Eat The Salad Greens Just Before They Are Ready To Be Picked; I Plot Ways To Kill These Animals But Can Never Bring Myself To Do It.

Everything I Do Is Because Of Writing. If I Go For A Walk, It's Because I'm Thinking Of Writing. I Go Look At Flowers, I Go Look At The Garden, I Go Look At A Museum, But It's All Coming Back To Writing.

All Of These Declarations Of What Writing Ought To Be, Which I Had Myself-though, Thank God I Had Never Committed Them To Paper-i Think Are Nonsense. You Write What You Write, And Then Either It Holds Up Or It Doesn't Hold Up. There Are No Rules Or Particular Sensibilities. I Don't Believe In That At All Anymore.