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.

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.

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.

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

I had a lot of expectations placed on me because I was already having some success with my short stories. That was not a good situation to be in. That by itself took a long time to overcome.

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender.