The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.
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.
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature.
All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.
I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.
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.
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 knew I wanted to be a writer and I knew if I had a wife and family, I would neglect something, and I was afraid it wouldn't be the writing.
I write with as much objectivity as I can.
