My ability to stress myself out.

If I had a trait that I truly deplored, I would work to erase or modify it…Probably, a lack of discipline. (Though people think that I write quickly, & don’t revise, quite the reverse is true.) To myself, I work very slowly & painstakingly, & am often frustrated by accomplishing so little. My friend Margaret Atwood has said that in the late afternoon she is likely to be overcome by a feeling of desperation that she has accomplished so little that day, & this is a feeling I share, often. It seems that I waste most of my time gazing out the window here at my (overgrown) garden; & when I am in Berkeley, where I spend about one-third of the year, I am forever gazing out the window toward the San Francisco Bay & a continually changing, always-beautiful sky.

Acting like the good little girl.

I dislike my impatience.

More than I can, sadly. I led the softest of lives in the softest of times, and my daughter will face sterner challenges.

“Try this, you’ll love it.”

A painting by Renoir, paid for by demanding a huge fee for a screenwriting deal with a producer I didn’t want to work for. The movie was never made.

I’m from Birmingham. I’m not afraid of things. Things are afraid of me.

The exact median middle-aged black woman in the US. If hard work guaranteed success, she’d be the most successful person on the planet. But she isn’t, yet she keeps on going.

Nothing. If I’m worried or upset or tormented, I go to sleep quickly and easily, to find welcome oblivion.