"Chekhov is one of my gods and this, his first play, is my favorite. It’s a well-observed ensemble of the famous, the not-so-famous and their hangers-on at a country house they retreat to when the theatre is too much with them. But even there they are very good at playing games with one another. The genius of Chekhov is to transcend the small events that define us and reveal the universal truth behind the most ordinary situation. To me, he is the first modern writer. He writes on a human scale and by doing so with such detail, he rises to Olympian heights as surely as Oedipus or Hamlet."

"I love Thomas Hardy. I don’t think a lot of people know that he was also a great poet and a writer of short stories because he produced so many novels. One of my favorite short stories—and I’m not a big short story fan—is An Imaginative Woman. It’s tragic. People are going to think I’m morbid, loving all these sad books. I actually don’t mind a happy ending in a novel—certainly, it’s nice when it happens. But when you’ve invested so much time and your fingers have pushed through all that paper and you get to the end…well, a tragic ending kind of goes with the tragedy of finishing a book."

"Carolyn Cassady was the wife of Neal Cassady who is the hero in Kerouac’s “On the Road.” She was his wife, but also an artist and art teacher, and she was linked to this absolute lunatic of a man who was her Achilles heel. He regularly betrayed her, but you love who you love. She had a love affair with Kerouac as well—weirdly because Neal Cassady suggested it. She was an incredibly gifted writer, but she was managing these crazy men in her life and bringing up her children and I guess she didn’t see herself in that way. But she wrote with so much intuition and insight, and a lot of beauty as well."

"I also read this in college. I guess going to college was great, because I read some great books. It’s considered a novel but the structure is more a collection of vignettes. Some poetry and some short stories. I really like how it keeps your brain engaged; when the writer switches between this structure and dialogue and not proper English, it makes you focus on what’s actually being written. I love how ambitious it is. It’s also another book about black life that tons of people should love and read and not only read during Black History Month. You know what? Read this book in April when it’s raining outside. How about that?"