Writer

The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.

My characters hope for better lives.

With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it.

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

But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.

Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.

The big talent is persistence.

When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived in the house with them and us.

The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always write about. It's my way of dealing, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than psychiatrists. The story, you see, will get you through.

My characters hope for better lives.

I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.

When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived in the house with them and us.

How dull it is to have people defining you.

I'm very happy alone.

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.

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 had novels to write, so I wrote them.

I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'

I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'

On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that.