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.

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.

Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

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.

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

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