My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.

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.

Your life is always paying close attention to your thoughts. I hope the words in your mind are consistently in your favor.

Curiosity is the beginning of wisdom.

If you didn't understand the need for friendship or love, could you be lonely?

I like to interpose in all of my appointments, if the Lord wills.

There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.

I learned a lot about critics, not to really take them too seriously about movies.

Arsene Wenger has got to unlock the purse strings

Tony Morrison said, 'Can't I love what I criticize, criticize what I love.'

Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.

If you are what you've always been, you are not a Christian. A Christian is a new creation.