I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories. ↗
This recognition of the earlier human background, now so obvious to us, did not come all at once, for the inclusion of history itself in university instruction is an event less than two centuries old. ↗
When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I'm familiar with. I don't write stories about the nineteenth century. ↗
I'm aware that most people who meet me for the first time think of me in a certain way because of who my father is. That just comes with the territory. But that's been that way ever since I was a little kid as long as I can remember. I grew up that way. ↗
One of the biggest things I understood in a program like that was that it allowed more young African American scholars to do field research in the Caribbean and in Africa than had ever happened before in the history of the country and since. ↗
I extract what I consider the best material from different sources. But often the material I perform comes from a very strange location in history, which are minstrel shows. ↗
A handful of men, inured to war, proceed to certain victory, while on the contrary, numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to the slaughter. ↗
While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen. ↗
