We don't act the same in every situation. Things bleed into all kinds of other things, from behavior to identity.

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.

Paroxysms of pain and twinges of desire leach from universal sources. All human suffering buttons itself to the pang of wanting.

They said, "Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we declare Your praise and sanctify You?

Our culture has become so obsessed with celebrity that it’s easy to confuse fame with success. They are not the same thing.

Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.

In a tuxedo, I'm a star. In regular clothes, I'm a nobody.

The more spastic song structure I have, the more I hate it afterwards.

There is nothing I love more than my role as a mom.

Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.

Happiness is the only goal worth pursuing

We obtain better knowledge of a person during one hour's play and games than by conversing with him for a whole year