I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs.

The truth is that an intellectual life is available to almost anyone, almost anywhere, if they work hard enough and are given some kind of access point.

Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.

It was always a false assumption that white American writers cannot write novels about race unless they're approaching it from a very oblique angle.

Only when you leave do you appreciate what binds American people and our cultural experience together.

There's an enormous difference between normative white masculinity and normative black masculinity.

It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is.