Colored, Negro, Afro-American, African American. ... Every couple of years someone came up with something that got us an inch closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed.

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

There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.

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

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.