Contradictions make people feel off. They'll say, "Hey, you just said this and now this person is doing that, how is that possible?"

The Sellout is about friends and relatives who have touched me in real ways.

I try to be accommodating, but I'm pretty much a loner.

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.

People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.

Sometimes I highjack memories. Sometimes I switch them around. Sometimes they're just in the background, like some little bass note. Those things have carried me through, especially when I first started writing. They're still there, but more in the distance these days.

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