A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently.

One of the earliest lessons I learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back.

There is no American history. There is no French history. There is no John Wideman. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.

To be a survivor as an African American man - maybe any man - you have to be pretty tough. Or at least that's what we all understand.

I don't tell everything. I want the reader to have the feeling that maybe they know the whole truth, but they don't.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

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.