All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.

The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.

I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.

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

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.

I swim in a shaft of light, upside down, and I can see myself clearly, through and through, from every angle. Perhaps I stand on the brink of a great discovery.

When I write a book, I hope to be beyond mortal by the time I'm finished.