I'd have been a filmmaker or a cartoonist or something else which extended from the visual arts into the making of narratives if I hadn't been able to shift into fiction.

I've always been passionately in love with movies, to such a degree that even as a young person of about nineteen or twenty I thought maybe I would try to become a film director. The reason I didn't do it was because I felt I didn't have the right personality. At that time in my life, I was mortally shy.

I'm a serial deconstructor of my own authority in certain areas.

It's now expected of me that I will defy expectation, so I really generally seem to be free to write what I want.

To the resentment that hides inside love, to the loneliness that hides among companions.

I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow I keep myself sane.

What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?