I try to find the beauty in things. On dark days, I sit in my armchair looking at clouds and I am awed at how rain is made.

I think being consistent is really important. In the arts there's a misconception that you sit around waiting for the muse to come, and that it's all really mystical and mysterious. In reality, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it.

The correlations between real life experience and the storylines in novels are never as direct or simple as they might seem.

My book has a pre - civil rights setting with a post - civil rights sensibility. I believe less and less that there is something called "The Black Experience," though undoubtedly there was one once.

One of the things that writers worry about is finding a voice. I don't think it's a thing that you find so much as it is something that comes to you, or that presents itself.

Racial terrorism affects the lives of white people and black people and everyone, everything. Racism is contaminating. It can affect the dogs in the street. So the process of beginning to rid the country of prejudice was in itself a kind of nation-building.

Half of what's wrong with people today is that they ain't got no place to go that makes them peaceful.