There are still horrible things that go on because of the myth of race, but we don't have to succumb totally.

I really dislike it when people talk about "experimental," because any good writer is experimental.

That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is.

I believe - what did Faulkner say? "The past is not even past."

I really dislike when people talk about "experimental," because any good writer is experimental. As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well. I've been experimenting with these things myself in my own books.

Even in my adult years, when I heard a white person speaking in a Southern accent I was initially suspicious.

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.