If you're bored, your readers will be bored. If you're faking it, you won't get the kind of readers you want.

Economic justice is not just something blacks are crying out for; whites are desperate for it, too. But in the public imagination, the face of poverty is black. In all actuality, the face of poverty is white.

The hardest thing about Berlin is letting it belong to other people.

Hillary certainly needs the black vote, and Democrats need it. She's not doing anything too soon; she's raising her money and not wanting any issues to come back and bite her later. The black vote will be crucial for Hillary and so will the women's vote.

Being a liberal progressive has been demonized as anti-white or overly on the side of blacks. There's nothing that can be done about that; it's just where we are in the history of our perceptions.

In her excellent, entirely readable Richard Wright, Hazel Rowley accomplishes what [previous biographer] Michel Fabre would have liked to do with once-guarded letters, aging witnesses, previously unidentified girlfriends. . . . Mostly, Rowley concentrates on telling Wright's very powerful story.

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.