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.

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

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

You've got to bend with the wind or you're broken.

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 knew I wanted to be a writer and I knew if I had a wife and family, I would neglect something, and I was afraid it wouldn't be the writing.

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