"I think that's the job of the artist, to make the impossible possible."

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."

"I'm a black writer. I'm not a writer who happens to be black."

"My work is to make sure that the people I'm writing about are human, and that they are complex, and that they are not stereotypes."

"Slavery is never a choice. It's a condition."