I'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].

All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.

I don't write to put it in a drawer, I hope that people see it.

People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.

I'm not searching for the truth.That's too much pressure .

Why are the mainstream buzz things rarely contemporary? It doesn't happen very often. It's hard to feel culpable or implicated or even apathetic.

I think there's nothing new going on. Except that, you're even more public than you've ever been.There's some good and some bad to that.

If New York is the City That Never Sleeps, then Los Angeles is the City That's Always Passed Out on the Couch.

It's so hard to say what you really mean. For any number of reasons: to protect yourself, or if you just can't find the words.

Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.

In The Sellout I tried to capture how we can talk and see race, how we see urbanity, and how we see our history.

When the need to succeed is as bad as the need to breathe, then you’ll be successful.

‪You would not be able to manage millions of dollars well when you are not managing thousands of dollars ‬well

Spending all your energy on one opinion is like confining yourself to living in a box, and most people in a box aren't living.

Practice like you’ve never won. Play like you’ve never lost.

Girls had never been important. I'd had a girlfriend or two and had liked them a lot but it wasn't love, because my first love was tennis.

To make my brothers and my sister laugh was the greatest joy to me in my life. I like people who can make fun of themselves a lot.

A simile is just a metaphor with the scaffolding still up.

My parents always told me that if you want something, you can do whatever you have to do to get it. As long as it's not against someone else.

I will attack no matter what and win the war!

Luckily, growing up "unfinished" can make geeks the very best people to guide and nurture the next generation of outsiders: We know you don't have to be finished to be awesome.