Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn't cry, either. Something about my grandmother's stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything."

Your explanation depresses me," I said. "Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

I stay cool, and dig all jive, That's the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.

Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.