"What for?" I said. "What for, Tante Lou? He treated me the same way he treated her. He wants me to feel guilty, just as he wants her to feel guilty. Well, I'm not feeling guilty, Tante Lou. I didn't put him there. I do everything I know how to do to keep people like him from going there. He's not going to make me feel guilty."

"You going back," she said. "You ain't going to run away from this, Grant."

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

You've got to bend with the wind or you're broken.

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.

A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth - and that's a myth.

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