I'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable.

I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways.

One of the problems with a lot of "confessional" writing is that it starts and stops with the confessional and doesn't really tie the "I" into a "we" at all. I'm still surprised at how mad critics get at that kind of confessional writing.

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.

I allude to Back to the Future in the 1985 story to let folks know it was an inspiration and because it literally was the most time-travelly bit of pop culture we had in the mid 80's. I can talk about their tools for considering change. First, the book is metafictive in a traditional sense where I'm showing and telling the reader that the act of writing and reading is a reflexive way to push boundaries of real and literal time travel. Writers and readers are time travellers. The question is what we do with that time we traveled when we leave a book, leave a page.

I'm also, than anything else, a teacher and a student. And without the four hours, I'm pretty monsterish. For real.

I'm not good enough as a person and definitely not good enough as a writer.