If you have a character stand up and put on her shoes and open the door, in order to do that, you're imagining her shoes and her clothes and her house and her door. The character becomes more real. But once you've done that, you can probably just get it all across with a couple of details.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.

I don't have the courage not to write all the time.

I just like doing it, I like writing.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.

We have to give our poor, innocent, and undeserving-of-our-badness characters trouble in order to make them characters in a story.