We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and if we screw up we can get in a world of trouble - we're very intense dreamers.

I'm very hard-nosed and cold-blooded and I can walk past a drowning man. If I have someplace else to go, well, tough s**t. I could do that. I can. Have. Sometimes, not because I was callous but had to do it.

You have to be a minor superhero just to get to be a dignified man, and that's kind of exacerbated for men of color.

There's something human that has to do with time and space and being who I am that is in progress and always will be in progress. And who I am, on different days, different moments, depends on different aspects of my past.

Things seem to fall apart inevitably.

Remember that a book is many drafts - mine certainly are. It's improvisation. It's as much jazz and the way we talk and the way I heard people preach coming up as it is writing.

I get off on anticipating and waiting much more than I get off on the actual event.