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.

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

But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.

I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That doesn't interest me. I want everything to be essential.

You could grow up in the city where history was made and still miss it all.

I had an all-Fear of Music iPod, just versions of the 11 songs from the record. No other songs allowed.

What I'm constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget that the medium of communication is language.