I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.

Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.

I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.

I don't know anywhere in the world where there is not racism against somebody.

Most of the things that are asked of me as a representative black person, would suggest never are we equal Americans.

The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.

Brown people wouldn't speak to someone who was black.