It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot of guns and liquor and secrets.

When you're interviewing someone, even your mother - you have to sort of deal with you have to get some objective space from yourself and the person but you also have to find what's the best way to get the information from that person.

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.

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.

Slavery was a web of relationships, and if people knew how thick the whole business was, they would not make fun of people like Harriet Tubman. They would understand how intelligent she was and how sharp.

What humor allows you to do is to let the past go with less pain. It's a healing element. It releases some of the pain from the shotgun wound.

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.