Don't tell me to believe. Don't tell me to believe in the same God or laws that men believe in who commit these murders. Don't tell me to believe that God can bless this country and that men are judged by their peers. Who among his peers judged him? Was I there? Was the minister there? Was Harry Williams there? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was my aunt? Was Vivian? No, his peers did not judge him, and I will not believe.

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.

He told us that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts.

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

Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.

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

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?