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.

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

Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.

Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

I have no more to say except this: We must live with our own conscience.

...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.

I think I'm a very religious person. I think I believe in God as much as any man does. I don't only believe in God, I know there's God.