That Is How I Came To Think

The Strange Thing About My Life Is That I Came To America At About The Time When Racial Attitudes Were Changing. This Was A Big Help To Me. Also, The People Who Were Most Cruel To Me When I First Came To America Were Black Americans. They Made Absolute Fun Of The Way I Talked, The Way I Dressed. I Couldn't Dance. The People Who Were Most Kind And Loving To Me Were White People. So What Can One Make Of That? Perhaps It Was A Coincidence That All The People Who Found Me Strange Were Black And All The People Who Didn't Were White.

I Understood That I Was Inventing Myself, And That I Was Doing This More In The Way Of A Painter Than In The Way Of A Scientist. I Could Not Count On Precision Or Calculation; I Could Only Count On Intuition.

I've Written A Book About My Mother, And I Don't Remember Anyone Going To Antigua Or Calling Up My Mother And Verifying Her Life. There Is Something About This Book That Drives People Mad With The Autobiographical Question.

The Slave Trade Was Globalism. Why People Insist That Globalism, After Its Hideous History, Is A Good Thing, I Do Not Know.

He Must Have Smiled At Me, Though I Don't Really Know, But I Don't Like To Think That I Would Love Someone Who Hadn't First Smiled At Me.