A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn't accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else's insistence or someone else's whim or convenience.

All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had.

Every day offers you 10,000 reasons to cry, but if you can find just one reason to laugh then you will be all right.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Let me tell so much truth. I want to tell the truth in my work. The truth will lead me to all.