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.

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.

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

Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable.

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.

I'm not a fearful person, but I'm a pretty pessimistic person. So some of my best times are waiting, anticipating. That's the way it always has been with me, whether anticipating a ball game, anticipating a relationship.

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.