That one lesson that African American communities have learned over the centuries in America is that you can't just take for granted that things will steadily get better and better and better until they're great. It is fits and starts. It is backward and forward.

It is part of what makes America great. That tradition of the free press, and also the tradition of this highly competitive market for investigative journalism. We're seeing, there's no question, that we're seeing a renaissance of that.

Our political divides have become our personal divides.

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.

There is little novelty in the detective who cannot solve himself.

We spend so much time, these days, on forms of literature that don't rise to be literature, and I'm speaking about Twitter posts and quick and hot takes on different websites. We sort of zoom from thing to thing like a hummingbird.

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.