For me, the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. And that's become my definition of art; to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as opposed to dropping it all on the first page.

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

I've been reading about and writing about the Civil War period and it is so striking that slavery was never made right - [Abraham] Lincoln was killed, Reconstruction came along, and all of that inequity was frozen in place and carried forward rather smugly. So I think the burden is now upon us white people, to say that this systemic inequality offends us.

It's on us to investigate ourselves for any lingering sense that we are 'giving' equality. We are not. It is already given. And not by us.

I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations.

My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.

I'm not a natural criticizer - I prefer to like and praise and so on.