"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.

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

I've never let the criticism deter me.

I like cooking, but I think someone else ought to do the dishes.

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

The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.

In my writing, I'm often describing a universal situation. A situation in which human beings often choose to violate each other. Sometimes I happen to explore that in terms of the black/white dynamic. Generally, a white person does not like me to say, or does not like to be told, "You know, what you did was incredibly wrong."