if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.

I write out of defiance.

I'm sometimes afraid I'll cross a line and it'll be difficult to come back, say, to dinner.

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

It is true that our skin is sort of more or less the same shade. But is it true that our skin color makes us a distinctive race? No.

When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.

If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.