"I am not interested in writing for white people. I am interested in writing for Black people."

"There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race — scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct… it has a social function, racism."

"I want to feel what I feel. Even if it's not happiness."

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."

"I think of myself as an archaeologist, digging through the past to find the truth."