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.

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.

I write with as much objectivity as I can.

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

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.

I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.

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.