A book is not a tweet. A book is not a half-hour television show. A book requires for both reader and writer sustained discipline attention. It asks you to immerse yourself in something and really deeply feel it.

In terms of optimism, I am optimistic. I do think that, in the long term, that America will right itself. I have to think so.

A book is not a tweet. A book is not a half-hour television show. A book requires for both reader and writer sustained discipline attention. It asks you to immerse yourself in something and really deeply feel it.

Fiction has this special power. It has a power to clarify, to galvanize, to prophesy, and warn.

Here in America we have a man [Donald Trump] who is a master of a medium that is all about self-aggrandizement and/or cruelty to others. I have been off Twitter lately because I had this sudden sort of feeling of, this man is the president of this club and it's not a club that I want to be in. Sometimes I feel like, well, perhaps it's not right because as a political activist, this is where politics is happening right now. This is where the conversation is going on, but at the same time, I think there is something corrosive about it.

We forget the conditions - not only in slavery - but after slavery, when there was this purposeful locking out of African Americans from economic opportunity. Or we forget today's incarceration rates, and educational and housing discrimination; all of these things. We pretend that everything that has happened happened long ago, and then we act as if we all now just treat each other equally, everything will be fine.

History is not the linear sort of movement toward better and better things.