You learn from music, from watching great athletes at work - how disciplined they are, how they move. You learn these things by watching a shortstop at work, how he concentrates on one thing at a time. You learn from classic music, from the blues and jazz, from bluegrass. From all this, you learn how to sustain a great line without bringing in unnecessary words.

Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free. Yes, they must believe, they must believe. Because I know what it means to be a slave. I am a slave.

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

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

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.

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