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

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

How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? Who made them God?

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

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.

Now, about that mulatto teacher and me. There was no love there for each other. There was not even respect. We were enemies if anything. He hated me, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. I didn't like him, but I needed him, needed him to tell me something that none of the others could or would.

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