To me money is the ability to create lifelong experiences for my family and myself to educate my children and a way to give back to humanity.

I don't want to be reincarnated that's for sure. When you've had rewarding experiences in your life - a loving family friends - you don't need additional reassurances that you're going to do something with a new cast of characters. I'd just as soon pass.

As a novelist I mined my history my family and my memory but in a very specific way. Writing fiction I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.

For the first time ever I was taking the family on the road. We stayed with my in-laws which on life's list of experiences ranks right below sitting in a tub full of scissors.

He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.

In this connection faith and experience teach us many truths by means of the short-cut of authority and by the proofs of very pleasant and agreeable feelings.

But back to your question it was a wonderful experience with the Art Ensemble and I keep in contact and sort of follow what's going on but it was also very important to make this step you may say this leap of faith.

The marriage of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution honored in all cultures and by every religious faith. It's in this institution that children are meant to be nurtured. We know this after thousands of years of human experience.

Let's say black the whole black religious experience here is very impressive to me because when I first arrived I realized that people carry their faith with so much pride.

Divorce is never a pleasant experience. You look upon it as a failure. But I learned to be a different person once we broke up. Sometimes you learn more from failure than you do from success.