Losing my parents really set me adrift in more ways than one. It's not just losing them. It's losing the possibility of family.

The fear in my heart was like in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can't do it, you can't run because the fear is an anchor in your chest.

Literature is the adventure. It's the story, it's the fight, it's people falling in love, it's people with deep personality disorders who succeed anyway beyond themselves. That's what great literature is.

Susan Straight finds LA's secret heart in Between Heaven and Here and with a sleight of hand only the masters have, she creates an alley, a neighborhood, a history that is as rich and tragic as any Shakespearean tale.

Comic books were telling me what life was about. This was how I kind of entered life, through fiction.

At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.

I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun.