It's not a ladder we're climbing, it's literature we're producing. . . . We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.

If i can't have what i want . . . then my job is to want what i've got and be satisfied that at least there is something more to want

A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked... . We as black people, we as people, we as the human species have got to get used to the fact we're not going to be right most of the time, not even when our intentions are good. We've got to go naked and see what happens.

Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.

I move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don't.

If you're a writer, the answer to everything is yes.

We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.