Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.

Of course I'm a black writer... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Something that is loved is never lost.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

Being able to laugh got me through.

Here I am not the one to throw out. No one steals my warmth and shoes because I am small. No one handles my backside. No one whinnies like sheep or goat because I drop in fear and weakness. No one screams at the sight of me. No one watches my body for how it is unseemly. With you my body is pleasure is safe is belonging. I can never not have you have me.

There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.