I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.

I have no more to say except this: We must live with our own conscience.

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.

Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? Who made them God?

And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better.