“ I'm very happy alone. ”

“ When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away. ”

“ Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow. ”

“ I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision. ”

“ I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure. ”

“ Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned. ”

“ Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not. ”

“ Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce. ”

“ People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't. ”

“ Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. ”