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.

Narrative stories are nothing but models of karma and causality - how one thing leads to another. And a lot of narrative fiction is about causality that we don't immediately understand.

There's been a lot of talk about black men and the presence and absence of black men in positions of power in American culture.

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.

There is something very quiet and reserved and pessimistic about Obama's temperament that is deeply un-American. There are those people who claim, "Oh, he wasn't born here" - all that is nonsense.

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

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