The fallout from slavery is ongoing. I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

For years I felt that I wasn't ready to take on slavery. It's a huge topic, and I didn't want to mess it up.

I want to keep growing as a writer. I find myself doing unexpected projects and sort of challenging my idea of where I am in my career, or what I'm supposed to be doing. In fact, I'm not supposed to be doing anything. Just finding projects that are challenging to me. I want to be a writer who keeps growing and figuring out new things and hopefully people will follow me along as I publish these things.

If I have three ideas and I'm working on one more than the others, that sort of tells me that I should work on that one.

I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth (unathleticism). Perhaps if there were a sport centered around lying on your couch in a neurotic stupor all day, I'd take an interest.

Twenty years ago, when I started writing, I didn't define myself as an African-American writer. And then you write books and you're focused on what's inside your books, and that kind of term is generally used on the outside, by the critical establishment.

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.