Keeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed.

People might be surprised to know how much I throw away. For every page I publish, I throw 10 pages away.

Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.

Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least for the survivor Genna. It is also intended as a comment on race relations in America more generally: we are 'roommates' with one another, but how well do we know one another?

Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.

There is nothing "ordinary" about reality.

Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.