It really upsets me that the media insists on turning 'Do the Right Thing' or 'Boyz N the Hood' into 'black films.' They are American films. They may open the window on the black experience, but they had things to say to everybody. That's why they were so successful.

Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.

As in creating some significant work the artist first experiences something akin to dream awareness that becomes clarified in the creative process itself, so we must first have a vision of the future sufficiently entrancing that it will sustain us in the transformation of the human project that is now in process.

Pop art is a way of liking things.

My dad would go to work every day and write in a room full of funny people. He enjoyed it. I know great writers who find the process agonising but to me, writing has always been sheer joy.

My desire as a storyteller is to always catch the readers off guard; to give them something they aren't expecting, and take them in a direction that is satisfying in the here and non.