I want to view my own efforts to write a novel as a function of my own artistic aspirations rather than a good career move. And I need to learn how to commit to characters for a longer time, to confront the limits of my own capacities for attention and compassion. That's what a writing career does, in the best instance: it allows you to keep after what you can't do.

Football is Lotto for kids from economically vulnerable neighborhoods.

I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.

Football is the kind of game where you have to really segregate kids from the general population and kind of colonize their minds. It's more intense and demands more than other sports. And this is why the folks who are involved (as players, coaches, boosters, fans) are so much more devoted to it. It's really a cult, when you think about it.

At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

There's an invisible army of woman and men who really don't get why we give so much of ourselves to football. And they need to SPEAK UP.

Part of what depresses me so much about football is that it's so clearly about exploiting people, most of them poor boys of color, because of what they can do to entertain us, not because we have any genuine concern for them as people.