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.

I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.

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.

Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake.

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

In all my stories and novels, no one ever escapes Louisiana. Maybe that is because my soul never left Louisiana, although my body did go to California.

Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.