“And you know what happens when a bomb goes off? The truth about people comes out. Men leave their children and run away. Shopkeepers push aside wives and try to save their cash. People come and loo...”

“Most of the people in the audience were white and old. They had the gaunt look of people who have seen all the important movies and can now only look forward to reruns.”

“What if I've died a long time ago and come here? he wondered. What if the defining characteristic of hell is that you're locked in an endless, blind battle to reform it?”

“The roots of shame run deep.”

“Every child is a packet of disappointments, hurts, dangers.”

“To ask a child to feel sympathy for the poor is harder than getting him to feel sympathy for a chicken or a goatat least you can see a goat being slaughtered.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”

“Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.”

“A weapon does not decide whether or not to kill. A weapon is a manifestation of a decision that has already been made.”

“Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.”