"I'm not interested in writing about happy people. I'm interested in writing about real people."

"Racism is a distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you from thinking you’re not good enough or that you’re not worthy."

"I'm writing for black people, in the same way that Tolstoy was writing for Russians, but everybody was reading Tolstoy."

"When you get to be my age, you realize that people are not all that different."

"I think that's the job of the artist, to make the impossible possible."