I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.

When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back.

Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

Already my childhood seemed far away—a remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers. Did I regret its loss, did I want it back? I didn't think so.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you're going to say, 'Where did we come from, what happens next?' The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.