I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.

I grew up in the church, and so I feel that God gave me certain things to do, and I'm lucky enough to kind of have figured those things out. I just don't want to die not having tried to help somebody else with what I know.

The act of choosing what to place in your piece when you're a historian or a non-fiction writer already renders it into fiction for someone else. In some ways fiction comes a lot closer to reality. When you start talking about something as brutal as slavery and life in the American West, it's really important to take a non- judgmental stance. We romanticize a great deal about life in the American West, but I thank God I wasn't living during that time. No matter what color you were, it was rough, crude, tough living.

It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.

My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.

Be kind to the living.

Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.