Unfortunately, in the world today, we have dogmatic people entering into politics. I don't think the two mix.

Given all of the anti-Muslim propaganda that's being disseminated by The American Nazi media, you have to be careful. It can stress you out.

If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.

My work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition of American writing that reaches back to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Do you think that Gwendolyn Brooks would give an award to someone who hated Black women, the lie that was circulated throughout New York and reached all the way down to Martinique where I was a guest Professor? The lie was circulated by people who don't read my books.

The plays raise issues that are ignored in other forums.

Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence.