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 wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.

Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.

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

I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature.

What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.