Hell, I'm going to play pro basketball. I'm going to maybe be famous. I'm going to write books.

Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.

A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently.

As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well.

I had a deep prejudice against the South. It's taken me many years to get over that, be more open and thoughtful.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

One of the earliest lessons I learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back.

You have to be a minor superhero just to get to be a dignified man, and that's kind of exacerbated for men of color.

All Stories are True.

I believe - what did Faulkner say? "The past is not even past."

Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable.

A pure belief can not be forced on human's heart.If it could, no need for terms such as 'I've told you'.

Save your wealth against future calamity. Do not say, "what fear has a rich man of calamity?" Wealth sometimes vanishes away and large accumulations perish.

Fiction is risky for writers also in that the process of making certain books, of shaping certain narratives, leaves scars and marks on your inner life.

New York is essentially national in interest, position, pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular state, but to the United States.

Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.

Before redeye flights, I drink copious amounts of herbal brews to help me relax and fall asleep after takeoff.

I want to keep pushing myself so I never feel settled. I don't really know if it's going to end up working. I'm stressed out most of the time.

But precisely this illusion that everything is "clear" is what is blinding us all. It is a serious temptation, and it is a subtle form of pride and worldly love of power and revenge.

A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless... someone's got to make a wake up call.