Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.
Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.
Grace under pressure isn't just about bullfighters and men at war. It's about getting up every day to face a job or a white boss you don't like but have to face to feed your children so they'll grow up to be a better generation.
In the beginning, I tried to be a more cosmopolitan writer, but I realized that I was a country boy, and I had to deal with things I knew about and where I came from.
The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.
What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.
The mark of fear is not easily removed.
When I'm sitting in the church alone, I can hear singing of the old people. I can hear their singing and I can hear their praying, and sometimes I hum one of their songs.
I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.
All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.
I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.
A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth - and that's a myth.
I write with as much objectivity as I can.
I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.
There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.
I think I'm a very religious person. I think I believe in God as much as any man does. I don't only believe in God, I know there's God.
