I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.

The point of Berlin was that it seemed that only people like you ran the city. You never ran into people who weren't like you - especially when you lived as that kind of American in Berlin connected to the arts.

Obama can't be everything to everyone. He changed. He did. I never thought I'd hear Obama say, "Let's go back to nuclear arms," but he did. In the meantime, the clear and present danger is the Republicans in the Senate. A lot of politics isn't heroic, it's as day-to-day as our lives themselves. We always want to make the Byronic choices, but Byron himself was not Byronic all the time either.

I can see Obama trying to be the president who suggests solutions for everyone who has experienced economic hardship.

Identity has several parts, and the self needs to expand. Black youth should be encouraged to have as many parts or as rich an identity as possible. It's a form of allowing them to be curious about the world.

People from Europe and people from Africa encountered one another long before the invention of "Europe" and "Africa" and "white people" and "black people."

What happened after World War I was disgraceful. Most veterans, like my great-uncle, were squashed back into place. Congress couldn't pass an anti-lynching bill. The World War II generation, though, wasn't going to take it.