I just read history books. I read nothing but history books. They have so much to give; I wish I'd majored in history in college.

I think a lot of the history we've read up to this point, some of it is just off. It's written with the same prejudice that certain networks have when they report the news of the day.

I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!

I felt like a Tinker toy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt.

It's a real stumper to sit around and try to think in your own head, but when you go into somebody else's head that takes the foot off the breaks. You can think in someone else's head.

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.

As a journalist, I never critiqued anyone. I never review books. I've never felt qualified as a musician to say whether someone is a good musician or a bad musician. What happens with Black writers and Black artists is that if you're critiqued, for example, by a Black historian who wants to get his name on the cover of "The New York Times," and he says something, like, wacky, well, he'll get his name on the cover of "The New York Times" and he might get tenure, and your career suffers.