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.
Ben H. WintersBecause as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.
Ben H. WintersOne thing that fiction does is it allows us to take big picture questions, big issues, big moral and socio-political changes and see how they play out on real people's lives, with real individuals.
Ben H. WintersIt 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.
Ben H. WintersHere 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.
Ben H. Winters