Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.

We are the planet, fully as much as water, earth, fire and air are the planet, and if the planet survives, it will only be through heroism. Not occasional heroism, a remarkable instance of it here and there, but constant heroism, systematic heroism, heroism as governing principle.

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

Motivations are too tangled and complex.

The way I feel about every book is this: you don't finish it, you abandon it. All of my books have in some sense failed, otherwise I wouldn't write another one. If I wrote the perfect book, I wouldn't have to write again, and I wouldn't want to. That's not true for everyone, but it's true for me. I could walk away then. But so far I haven't managed to do it.

It's hard to know more about a person's life than what that person wants you to know.

If you are born black, it is better to be born now than in any other time in United States history. My grandson is black. His life is a different life than if he had been born when I was born.