I can write any kind of novel I want, any time, and sell it, but there's not that many people watching it. Even a low-rated TV show is a couple million more people than read my books. You want to be read, in essence. If you're a television writer, you're a writer and you want people to read your stuff. You're still reaching a bigger audience, that way. That's a philosophical way to look at it.

The crime part is the engine that moves the narrative and allows me to write the other things I want to write about.

Any time you have poverty, joblessness, sub-par public schools, and a lack of opportunity, you're going to have a high rate of crime.

We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep.

I can write any kind of novel I want, any time, and sell it, but there's not that many people watching it. Even a low-rated TV show is a couple million more people than read my books. You want to be read, in essence. If you're a television writer, you're a writer and you want people to read your stuff. You're still reaching a bigger audience, that way. That's a philosophical way to look at it.

The worst kind of novel is one that blames other people for the racial problem in order to make the reader feel good about himself. As if it's only rich white people or Republicans or conservatives who have this disease.

We couldn't have known - who could've predicted what happened in American politics in the 2016? The rise of racism again, or the peeling back of the onion and seeing racism again, was a bit of a surprise in the last couple years.