I'm an obsessive writer who needs and loves revision. Writing helps me learn and helps me teach.

I'm not good enough as a person and definitely not good enough as a writer.

I'm also, than anything else, a teacher and a student. And without the four hours, I'm pretty monsterish. For real.

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.

I'm a black writer from Mississippi. That's what I most consider myself.

I'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable.

I'm interested in how the confessional is so abrasively critiqued today. I'm not really comfortable with simply confessing but I do think "confessing" is a major part of reckoning.

Long Division has a lot of Afrosurrealist impulses. I think the book was more Afrofuturist when it was like 700 pages.

We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause.

Obama will win. We will win. Then we will continue to lose. And the right questions will never be honestly asked or answered, and it's all just too much.

Your letter reminds me that any love that necessitates deception is not love. It doesn't matter if that supposed love is institutional or personal.

Trust your inner voice.

I somehow make it through the first month. I dress and brush my teeth when they tell me to. And I experience the hollow feeling of complete loss, which is emptiness.

When you accept your value and have gratitude you are declaring your worthiness of further receivership.

If we have a great idea, we'll go, 'Oh, this could be a cool movie.' Or really for us, it's more like, 'Oh, this is a really bad idea. Let's do this. This seems really stupid.'

Whittle was an amazing chap. Tiny, stubborn, unstoppable - jet-propelled! It's amazing the impact his invention has had upon the world.

Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn't have had the incentive to start playing without it.

There is in hell a place stone-built throughout, Called Malebolge, of an iron hue, Like to the wall that circles it about.

I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.

Tell the truth, even if they do look at you funny.

Reviewing music or reviewing anything is a writing job. It's nice if you are experienced in the field you are writing about, but writing is what you are doing.