America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.