I'm Not Interested In Food. It's Just

You're Not A Black Man. You're A Human Being In God's Eyes. So When You Sit Down To Talk To Someone And You Talk To Them In Really Intelligent Terms, You Ask Difficult Questions, There's A Militancy That's Assigned To You Without You Asking For It, Because You Are Simply Judged By What You Look Like. If You're A White Person Asking The Same Questions, You'd Be One Of These Cnn Guys And Say How Brilliant He Is. That Doesn't Work For You, Because This Is The World We Live In.

My Parents Were Nonmaterialistic. They Believed That Money Without Knowledge Was Worthless, That Education Tempered With Religion Was The Way To Climb Out Of Poverty In America, And Over The Years They Were Proven Right.

There's Such A Big Difference Between Being Dead And Alive, I Told Myself, The Greatest Gift That Anyone Can Give Anyone Else Is Life. And The Greatest Sin A Person Can Do To Another Is To Take Away That Life. Next To That, All The Rules And Religions In The World Are Secondary; Mere Words And Beliefs That People Choose To Believe And Kill And Hate By. My Life Won't Be Lived That Way, And Neither, I Hope, Will My Children's.

Writing For Me Is Cutting Out The Fat And Getting To The Meaning.

The Basic Thing Is To Be Humble, And Pretend You're A Bartender In The Tavern Of Life. Don't Get Too Comfortable And Don't Really Listen To Anybody Else. Don't Stand Around With A Bunch Of Writers And Talk About Writing. You Know When You See Plumbers At A Plumbers Convention, Usually They're Not Talking About Plumbing: They're Talking About Whatever It Is That Two Men Happen To Talk About. They're Talking About Sports, Their Wives And Children. I Just Tell My Students, Don't Talk About Writing Too Much, Just Go Out And Do It. Find Out Whatever You Need To Get To The Mainland.