"I'm writing for black people, in the same way that Tolstoy was writing for Russians, but everybody was reading Tolstoy."

"I'm always surprised by what I write. I don't know what I'm going to say until I say it."

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

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."

"When you know something, you know it, and when you don't, you don't. And you can't fake it."