Writer

What I feel is there are certain demands that you have to satisfy in any piece of writing. When it's just for me, it's just for me, but if it's a piece for a particular publication, I know what they're going to ask for.

I think writing is an act of remembrance, I think that Instagram is an act of remembrance, and I think curating a show is an act of memory, too.

My love of performers is not really different than my love for painters. Everyone's really high-strung and trying to do the best they can.

One of the things that's great about writing for a magazine is that every week you get to be a different person. You're writing different things all the time and not slogging along for years on something.

I think, what's the point of writing a book that you would get in one sitting?

My mother reveres artists, and my sister and I have inherited her love of art and the stories about its creation.

I didn't like '12 Years a Slave' because it was playing to the Spielbergian model of redemption.

My self encompasses a lot of different things.

I'm attracted to people who work their little plot of land and cultivate it and cultivate it.

I don't know what else teaches you as much as writing. Perhaps reading. So if I don't have one or the other in the course of the day, I feel old.

I'm not one of those people who's against all-black productions of Tennessee Williams plays, but there are lot more complex and natural ways to bring people of color into the theater.

Broadway is not about surprises. It's about rewarding the putrid, formulaic crap that makes Broadway Broadway.

One of the things I liked about writing for a magazine was a kind of anonymity. When you do books, it's different than magazine pieces because you become a 'figure.'

I don't know what else teaches you as much as writing. Perhaps reading. So if I don't have one or the other in the course of the day, I feel old.

I think that you don't really want to write a book that doesn't really move people and doesn't get them to think.

Inspiration takes many forms, but it's rarely pure.

If you have a word of encouragement, you can do anything.

I have not seen 'The Lion King.' I don't do black folklore. And I'm black.

My mother reveres artists, and my sister and I have inherited her love of art and the stories about its creation.

Racism seduces us with its desire to categorize, shutting out the living and breathing and 'different' world all around us.