I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.

There has to be some mystery in life, because the joy of being a writer and the joy of being a musician is the joy of discovery. I don't want someone discovering for me what I should be discovering on my own. If a person is discovering for me, then they're living for me. It's my responsibility, indeed it's my privilege, to go out and discover the world for myself.

The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.

Be kind to the living.

It is hard to find romance in the present because there's nothing left to the imagination.

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.

If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.