I offer optimism. All my books have happy endings. I don't see any point in letting my readers down at the end. I'm an optimist - people feel that in my books.
Nashville feels like a big little town to me. It's got lots of culture and lots of interesting things to do and lots of interesting people. At the same time, it feels very small and tight-knit and very close. Everyone feels like they know each other.
I don't like letting anyone down. Not many people get satisfaction out of letting others down.
I always do my show and say hello. And a lot of people are standing around waiting to shake my hand and say thanks for, A, letting me talk to you, and letting me feel a part of what you do.
You've got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society.
Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It’s part of letting their actions have weight. It’s part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than just be a flurry of events. It’s part of letting them be real enough to be worth loving, rather than just attractive or glamorous or pretty or charismatic or cool.
My books are not about how it feels to be a black man. My books are about how it feels to be a human being, and part of what I'm trying to sort out is what we mean - what I mean, what you mean, what everybody in the culture means - when they say 'black man,' or they say 'white person.'
Youve got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society.
I promise you that during my life, I was more concerned about not letting people down, about doing my part, than I was ever into what it did for me.
It is interesting just generationally that you see that people are much more comfortable, and that's part of life now for this next generation of actors and just people in the world. But for those of us who were living when it didn't exist, being in social media feels like the last thing you want to do .
What I did, you know, being away from my family, letting so many people down. I let myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn't my life.
I feel like the harder the work, the better off I'll be later in the season. If I don't work out, it's not so much my letting me down as it is letting everybody else down.
Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren't cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.
I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.
Everybody has that thing about them that makes them special, and sometimes we try to dull it down or we don't always want to expose it, and maybe we've been taught that way or whatever. It's just a matter of letting it out and letting it go and letting people in on it.
I wanted you to thank you for being my friend and letting me play a part in your story.