"You going back," she said. "You ain't going to run away from this, Grant."

Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.

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

All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.

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.

Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.