The other thing [my psychology professor] said to me was that I was always very mindful of the person who was away from the group, that I was always trying to bring them in.

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.

Science is a careful investigation.

That, after all, was his job. The title of emperor carried with it only a single duty.To make everything better.

You have to humor them you know." Lucile sighed lightly as the door closed. "Men can be boring, but they are necessary. One needs to learn to work around them. Don't you think so?

I still believe in miracles, because being alive is a miracle on its own.

I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him to do His work through me.

If you don’t stay with your winners, you are not going to be able to pay for the losers.

It's so crazy because kids that wrote to me when they were 14 years old are still in my life. A lot have gone on to become musicians and artists in their own right who inspire me now.

The British government says that for Sinn Fein to be involved in talks the guns must be left at the door.

I try to encourage people to identify the things in life that they really want to do, so that over a period of time they can design or steer their life towards those things.

I am not interested in the support of anybody who stands for any form of prejudice as to anybody's race or religion. . . . I have no place in my philosophy for such beliefs.