The friends I have, and the people whom I admire, are people who have an understanding of the conditions under which we live, and have a humanist sense of the world. If that's lacking in my understanding of a person's negotiation of the world, I can't be close with that person.

I think of the described dynamics as a fluid negotiation. I don't think these specific interactions can happen to the black or brown body without the white body. And there are ways in which, if you say, "Oh, this happened to me," then the white body can say, "Well, it happened to her and it has nothing to do with me." But if it says "you," that you is an apparent part of the encounter.

Intimacy is important in my work because I don't understand existence without intimacy. All of us are dependent on other people - and in ways we don't know. You cross the street and assume that person isn't crazy, they don't want to mow me down with their car. I don't know that person but I am already in a relationship with them. I am asking them to abide by the traffic laws. If they decided not to, I'd be dead. Even in those anonymous ways, we're in relationships.

I always took note of them, because I think if you're in the black or brown body, you're negotiating them all the time. It's like women taking note of sexism. It's a kind of incoherency that you are constantly negotiating.

I think music, like writing, can be a mirror. Can turn back onto the listener, the viewer, the reader, an experience that they know but they don't know.

The truce is that. You forgive all of these moments because you're constantly waiting for the moment when you will be seen. As an equal. As just another person. As another first person. There's a letting go that comes with it.

I don't really agree with the role model thing. People are always saying that athletes shouldn't do X or Y because they are role models.