My own career started in New York at the 'Associated Press', a fast-paced news agency where we rarely had time for deep reporting.

The strength of fiction is not in reading about yourself, but in reading about other people.

What the art world has done, it has been constantly been pushing the boundaries about what art can be. It's like expanding its territory.

My intent was to gain experience for fiction I eventually hoped to write. But there's no question I was drawn in by the hope that journalism would be a creative, thrilling environment.

If you live through the death of your child, you should be able to talk about it and let other people know it's OK to go on.

I won't forget the hood. I won't forget the days of catching a bullet on the way to the mailbox or bricks with death threats that somehow made their way through the window.

Death is not extinction. Neither the soul nor the body is extinguished or put out of existence.

I became a very simple person. The simple things are the most precious to me. I don't ascribe much significance to the things I have now. That feeling of touching death has never left me.