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.

All of us, writers and non-writers alike, have incredible well-springs of personal experience and history. And we also have imagination - which I think is a kind of human miracle.

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.

Even if you don't feel like sitting down to write or working on that big proposal, or whatever it is, just show up anyhow and the rest will follow.

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.

There were class differences among black people then and there are class differences among black people now. There is still an assumption among many people in American society that being black is its own class, a blanket class. That, I believe, is an erroneous and deeply offensive view.

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.