When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

Now the writing in the head, I definitely do every day, thinking about how I want to phrase something or how I'd like to rephrase something I've already written.

As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

The grand irony, however, is that Southern segregation was not brought to an end, nor redneck violence dramatically reduced, by violence.

In America, we have to learn to be patient enough to figure out what somebody is saying. Somebody might actually be saying something.

Unfortunately, I'm not a person that's always capable of living up to the Boy Scout philosophy.