Deprivation of the ability to speak is more like an attack of impotence, or the amputation of part of the personality. To a great degree, in public and private, I “was” my voice. All the rituals and etiquette of conversation, from clearing the throat in preparation for the telling of an extremely long and taxing joke to (in younger days) trying to make my proposals more persuasive as I sank the tone by a strategic octave of shame, were innate and essential to me. I have never been able to sing, but I could once recite poetry and quote prose and was sometimes even asked to do so.

Writing became a therapy. First of all, it meant I was reconstructing my own existence. It was also an act of defiance. I wasn’t supposed to write. ... I evolved all kinds of mental exercises, even went back to those subjects which I said I hated in school, in particular mathematics. ... You know, anything to keep the mind alive.

God has never let me down. He’s a key factor in guiding my decisions and feeling safe within them. My wife and I suffered three miscarriages, one of them quite late in the pregnancy. Without faith, we would have retreated into our own corners to lick our wounds, but our love increased.

I was the first black in that particular league. And, we played in a town called Hagerstown, Maryland. ... I said to myself — and this is why Piper Davis came in — in my mind, “Hey, whatever they call you, they can’t touch you. Don’t talk back.”

Ever since adolescence, [my elder sister Anna] has been an enthusiastic admirer of the great Swedish writer, the Nobel Laureate Selma Lagerlöf, and she infected me so much with her enthusiasm that I decided to become a writer and describe Italian saga "à la Lagerlöf". But things were to take a different turn.