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

When I'm sitting in the church alone, I can hear singing of the old people. I can hear their singing and I can hear their praying, and sometimes I hum one of their songs.

Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One.

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.

The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.

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.

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