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

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.

Hell, I'm going to play pro basketball. I'm going to maybe be famous. I'm going to write books.

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.

When you're at the basketball court watching a game, one person may be talking about a fight he had with his wife, another is talking about the last hard-on he got, someone else is talking about the presidential election. The language and the tone and the voice - I'd love to be able to capture that spontaneity.

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.