I find it hard to think of myself as selling books. I don't even have a Web site. I want to sit and write, not sell.

Richard John Neuhaus, in his well-known book The Naked Public Square, tells us that in America, the public square has become openly hostile to religion.

Even in 2012, if there's a black character in the movies or on television that's a professional, if we even hear about their backgrounds they're always 'up from the streets.

I find it hard to think of myself as selling books. I don't even have a Web site. I want to sit and write, not sell.

So much emotion goes into writing fiction.

In real life there are indeed black people who have been in the middle class for generations, but in entertainment it's as if they don't exist.

I think of my novels as entertainments.