When I was writing my first novel, 'Where the Line Bleeds,' which had young black men as its main characters, I was very invested in telling the story and also very worried about the effects the story would have.
Poetry makes people nervous. Especially in schools.
Fear comes with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.
I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished.
As an actor, you're always nervous as to what a director will do with something.
All my life, I've been frightened at the moment I sit down to write.
Every time I make a movie I think that it's going to be my last one, I think that no one is going to show up. I always have this sense that they're all going to fail. I am scared to death.
I . . . am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever--& of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled.
I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.
