Because of all the cosmetic services like skin whitening and hair bleaching, there is a lot that people can do to change their appearance without having actual surgery. It's quite common in Thailand and Korea and Japan.

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

Prajna is insight into the world. And a lot of that insight has to do with karma and the way karma affects our lives.

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

I was relatively isolated from people of color. My parents are too old to be Baby Boomers; they had me later in life. So we didn't listen to any black music at all in the house, not even Ben E. King.

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.

The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.