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

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

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.

The artist must be like a heart surgeon. He must approach something with sympathy, but with a sort of coldness and work and work until he finds some kind of perfection in his work. You can't have blood splashing all over the place. Things must be done very cleanly.

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.

And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better.

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.