The way to succeed is never quit. That's it. But really be humble about it. ... You start out lowly and humble and you carefully try to learn an accretion of little things that help you get there.

Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country - to clear the air of the racial mirages, cliches, and lies that this country's very atmosphere has been filled with for four hundred years.

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

But then, as far as I know, as far as I've studied or heard or picked up, it seems that this type of thing is a curse against mankind.

That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.

You don't spend twenty years of your life in the service and not have a warm, nostalgic feeling left in you. It's a small service, and there's a lot of esprit de corps.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.