The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

When, in school, they were teaching algebra, I was studying differential equations at home.

My parents immigrated to this country from Jamaica with no more than a fifth-grade education.

When I was growing up, a lot of books affected me, but I never wrote letters to the author or anything like that. I'm always mindful that there are probably a whole bunch of people reading my books like that, too.

I'm a fairly ordinary person - a lifelong reader, a former software engineer, and former math teacher. I come from a wonderful family of teachers, musicians, librarians, and engineers. I think I surprised them as well as my friends and coworkers when I took up writing as a hobby and let it take over my life!