They seemed sexier than British writers. I'm much more likely to read writers from the old days, that I was brought up on. I don't want to spend the morning reading someone else's novel and then sit down and write my own because I know their voice will be in my head. So I'm much more likely to read poetry. I think the writer's job is to tell stories that worry about how we live, that worry about the kind of people we are, the kind of values we have and what we might do.
Human life has to be thought of and contemplated and worried about over and over again.
It's not as if Shakespeare has the final say. We have to think seriously about the fundamental questions of our existence, which is something that other forms, say journalism, television, movies, mostly can't deal with. It seems to me that the novel still is the greatest form of considering the human condition that is available to us. I've got lots of ideas. There's a novel that I've nearly finished and another one I want to write after that, which will be an overview of race since the 1950s to the present day.