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

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

That's one of the beauties, I think, of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed millions, but it didn't destroy everybody and it didn't destroy the inner lives of all the people who experienced it.

Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We have other kinds of languages, like mathematics, like music, like art, but there's always that gap.

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.

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.

I want to give the evidence in a way that is convincing, but I don't want to cheat.