Mat Johnson Quotes

I start with fear. It comes in so many forms. When I write, some of the fear goes away. So I write into the fear, and even more dissipates. I want to be scared while writing. I want to bring it to the surface so I can banish it.

People aren't social. They're tribal. Race doesn't exist, but tribes are real.

It is a great moment in every freak's life when he or she finds out that at least they are not the only one.

Long-haul trucking. Just roaming the country, alone, with audiobooks and podcasts, sleeping in the back of the cab, showering at gas stations at 4 a.m., minimal human contact. That's living the dream.

Even drunk, I knew any escape plan that involved going to Detroit, Michigan, was a harbinger of doom.

The sociopaths - that's the real problem. The whole street demeanor is about pretending to be a sociopath as well so that the real ones can't find you.

I look white to a lot of people. And I'm not. I'm African-American. I'm mixed. I like to call myself Mulatto because that definition fits. So, you know, I've dealt with the conflict my whole life between how I look and my actual ethnic and racial identity.

I love the idea of biracial. I actually don't use the word biracial. I tend to use mixed. Biracial to me accentuates the word race, and, you know, I don't really care for it.

Everybody just gets on my nerves after like, 10 minutes, you know.

For some reason, people always assign high cheekbones to some ethnicity, but apparently by their regards, everybody on earth has high cheekbones. So I don't know if that matters.

I'm really suspicious of anybody who comes in and says, this is your identity now, or this is your belief system, and now that you have this, everything's going to be great.

My weak suit is whatever each reader hates about each book.

My strong suit is that I've been willing to risk on the page to get somewhere interesting.

I've been writing forever, 20 years.