The thing that I do is that when I fail, I just keep quiet about it. I just let it go. It's done. I just go to the next thing. I don't complain, I don't go to - I pick my battles very, very judiciously, and I just assume that there's good in the heart of everybody.

But what difference does it make? ... When you're mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.

I wish all critics, no matter their color, were more sophisticated when it comes to the moral questions a film like 'St. Anna' is trying to raise.

If you're a creative person, you'd better not read what people write about you, because if it's good it'll blow your head up and it'll force you not to take the subway and you'll start taking cabs, and you'd better stay around people, and if it's bad, it just hurts your feelings so much it discourages you.

You know what needs to be done when you're a writer. You know what the job is, particularly if you're an African American writer, or if you deal with people, or if your subjects are poor people or people who need voice. So you don't really need to know whether or not you are doing the right thing. What you have to be wary of if you're doing the right thing to the right level that will surpass your own life. I'm hoping that my work will surpass my own life.

I'm proud of 'Miracle at St. Anna' and I loved it; there's no question in my mind it's as good as any movie that came out in 2007.

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.