It's weird because there is progress somehow. But there's so much that just feels the same. How important is that rank? How important is it that I am allowed to make these decisions? What does that really mean? What is progress? Is it progress that a black guy gets to push a button for the nuclear bomb? Is that progress? Maybe, I don't know.

I'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].

My good friend, the poet Kofi Natambu, once said, "Contradiction is how we operate."

It makes me think about how you hear these young people say, "I see you, man." Or even if you go and watch some basketball game over the summer and the announcer goes, "I see you," and you see that player smile. You know what I mean? That thing of just being recognized, especially when you do a little subtle thing. I don't know.

I think, and a lot of that has to do with where I grew up in California; [status] isn't something I think about that much.

Why are the mainstream buzz things rarely contemporary? It doesn't happen very often. It's hard to feel culpable or implicated or even apathetic.

That's such a great book [Bloods]. That's a perfect way to articulate this thing that we're talking about. Just because someone is a black general, doesn't mean this person is going to have a certain outlook on it.