Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.
I’m one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don’t have that. They don’t have that opportunity, they don’t have that.
When you’re interviewing someone, even your mother – you have to sort of deal with you have to get some objective space from yourself and the person but you also have to find what’s the best way to get the information from that person.
But at the end of the day, there are some questions that have no answers, and then one answer that has no question: love rules the game. Every time. All the time. That’s what counts.
Put yourself in God’s hands and you can’t go wrong.
The black church will accept anybody.
Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he’s a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he’s a novel.
My family is my career.
People don’t realize you’re blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it’s got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I’m home.
As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
If you’re going to cheat and take people’s history and you’re not writing the Bible, you ain’t really so great. But if you try to do it in a way that doesn’t hurt too many people, then you probably can get out of bed in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror.
Be kind to the living.
I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.
I wish all critics, no matter their color, were more sophisticated when it comes to the moral questions a film like ‘St. Anna’ is trying to raise.
I’d like to do something involving jazz. But books are how I earn my living, and I’d like to stay with the horse I rode in on.
I’m not interested in food. It’s just fuel.
I’m proud of ‘Miracle at St. Anna’ and I loved it; there’s no question in my mind it’s as good as any movie that came out in 2007.
If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.
First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.
I grew up in the church, and so I feel that God gave me certain things to do, and I’m lucky enough to kind of have figured those things out. I just don’t want to die not having tried to help somebody else with what I know.
I just read history books. I read nothing but history books. They have so much to give; I wish I’d majored in history in college.