In a literal sense, you're writing for white people. Are you aware of that? I'm writing for people, baby. You know, I don't believe in white people. I don't believe in black people either, for that matter.
But I know the difference between being black and white at this time. It means that I cannot fool myself about some things that I could fool myself about if I were white. But more white people read your novels, I believe, than black people. Well, black people may not read them, but they steal them.
And they sell them hot in bars. You do spend a long time between novels. Why is that? Well, I'm that kind of writer. There's no answer to that.
Some people write, I wish I was George Siminov. I write them in two weeks, but I can't. Everybody works the way he can work.
I must point out, though, too, that I've been working the last few years between assassinations. That doesn't make it any easier either. I mean, they're killing my friends. It's as simple as that. And I've been all the years that I've been alive.
For no reasons which, you know, which have any validity. Why don't you just want to get away somewhere and sit down and write your books? Why don't you want to do that? Because I'm better than that.
But you don't have to be better than that. Oh, I do. So you don't agree then?
I mean when people say, oh it's okay for him, he's escaped. What have I escaped? Where anyway? Would I go to escape?
To your country? Would I get a political asylum here? Where would a fleeing black man go if he wanted to escape?
There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some. There's more than one would think. In any case, if you break faith with what you know, that's a betrayal of many, many, many, many people. I may know six people, but that's enough. Love has never been a popular movement, and no one's ever wanted really to be free.
The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of very few people. Otherwise, of course you're in despair. walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you.
You could be that person. You could be that monster. You could be that cop. And you're deciding yourself not to be. The logic of despair is for me.
You know, cut your throat, right? But there's something wrong with someone who says he's in despair who keeps on writing. Because the despairing man doesn't write. Anyway, it's too easy.
It's too fashionable. I'm aware, you know, that I and the people I love may perish in the morning. I know that. But there's a light on our faces now.
If you live under the shadow of death, it gives you a certain freedom. I'm very happy, hard as it sounds. No, and relatively free.