We not only grew up on Be-Bop; Be-Bop raised us. For my generation, Be-Bop came on like a light bulb going flash behind the eyes.For us, it was not only an intellectual movement, but a way of life. We walked, dressed, and rapped Be-Bop.

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

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

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

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.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.