If all the students who slept through lectures were laid end to end, they'd all be a lot more comfortable. If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

I forget how beautiful and calm California is. It's not so much about the place, but also the age that I came to the place and, well, other things. New York is hard.

My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.

In White Boy Shuffle, I combined my seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Takemoto, who really saved me - I don't think I've ever told anyone this - and my first basketball coach, Mr. Shimizu, into one character. Something about the way they talked about things, and their attitudes, had a huge impact on me. Not that I necessarily agreed with them. It was important to me to just put them there to stay grounded.

In The Sellout I tried to capture how we can talk and see race, how we see urbanity, and how we see our history.

I talk about folding it in often with Althea, my girlfriend. She's getting her doctoral degree at Berkeley and she talks about how even when writing these very academic, and, for the most part, serious papers there's just so much going on in her head and heart, and it's a reminder that there's a reason that she's studying these things.

My British publisher has this independent press. It's pretty small; they actually won last year. And she's got this great energy, and she's fiercely independent, and you know this book was a hard sell. No one wanted to buy this book. But she did, and so it's paid off for her, I hope.