We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.

No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.

Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

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

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.

The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.