When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm.

Louis Armstrong, who learned to be in exquisite dress, came from the bottom, and he's not a trash can.

Now the writing in the head, I definitely do every day, thinking about how I want to phrase something or how I'd like to rephrase something I've already written.

The point is, you have an ethnic heritage and you have a human heritage. Your human heritage includes everything of human value.

I also wanted to do something that I hadn't really seen in almost any black novels, which was a complex love story in which both people were extremely intelligent and talented and understood a lot of things and were still at odds getting it together.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

What we need in America is a renaissance. We need to go forward by going backward.