Originality doesn't consist of saying it first, originality consists of saying it in a way that is specifically tailored to the moment in which you are addressing - and at the moment when the complications arise, challenging the logic of what you're doing.

My church is the world! I want to bring the gospel to as broad and as interesting an audience as possible.

Blackness is not simply a reactionary title or identity; that is indeed the "negative" way of characterizing African American identity.

The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests.

My job is to explain stuff you don't know or already know and have to unlearn. My job is to teach you stuff you don't know that you need to know, stuff you should know. I'm going to take what you already know and re-describe it.

It's not enough to be against something.

I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.