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

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

I don't really ask of myself a given word or page count or number of hours. To work every day, that's my only fetish. And there is a physical quality to it when a novel is thriving.

I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.

I'm gregarious with writers and never with manuscripts . . . I [like to] create the illusion of seamless perfection, so I alone know the flawed homely process along the way.

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

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