I'm healthier in California, probably a little happier, maybe.

I just rode cross-country and the thing I noticed is just how afraid everyone is, and how nervous and scared and angry people are. From my point of view, I don't think it's all necessarily justified, but I think that's easy for me to say.

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

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.

Even when it comes to writing fiction, how do you encompass all this stuff that's right on the tip of your tongue? You have to fold that into what you're working on.

I'm doing all these interviews with the British press, the Italian press, and others. They all want to talk about this stuff. I don't have a stance; I don't have a go-to thing to say about any of this.

I wrote poems and an essay about that weird language. We still remember it to a certain extent, and it still comes up when we're all together. It's so fundamental to how I think.