There Was A Positive Side To Not

As With Much Of The World's Problems, They Become Public--or Much More Of Interest--the Moment They Begin To Impact The West.

I Read Everywhere. It's Like A Bodily Function. I Don't Need Quiet. I Write And Read With The Tv On. I Follow The Tv Show While I Read. Tv Doesn't Require A Lot Of Brainpower.

What I Do Is Create A Lens Through My Work That Corrects My Readers' Cognitive Dissonance And Says: You Will See All Of It - Not What You Want Or What Makes You Comfortable, But All Of It. And You Will Not Erase What Displeases You.

I Think That Those Of Us Who Are Ordinary Disappear Easily Into The Backdrop Of Life And We Take Things For Granted. We Often Wake Up In Our Lives And Wonder How We Got There. But The Characters I Create, The People I Am Drawn To, Are Quite Extraordinary (and Not Always In Wholesome Ways), And They Offer Us The Chance To Understand Who We Really Are And How We Became Who We Are.

The Internet Is Really Our Meeting Place. We Have This Amazing Listserv. Every Time I Log Onto It I Feel A Sense Of Pride, Because If You Log On And Say, "oh I Was Just In San Diego And I Was In A Park And I Saw A Lion," The Flurry Of Replies On Average Is Just Like--wow! All These Existential Questions About What It Means To Be An African, And Never Having Seen A Lion At Home, But Having Seen A Lion Here. Everything You Say Turns Into This Real Philosophical Debate--it's Incredible In So Many Ways. And It's An Invigorating Place To Be.