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

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

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.

Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.

I still don't even know if the sheriff will let me see him. And suppose he did; what then? What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I'm still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?

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.