You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.

Everything my mother and father did was designed to put me where I am.

You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it.

I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black.

You should not pick an occupation because your think your parents want you to do it, or because you think it's the noble thing to do. You should only pick a job because it turns you on.

It turns out one of my ancestors fought in the Continental Army, so I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution.

The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again.