All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
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.
I was raised by a lady that was crippled all her life but she did everything for me and she raised me. She washed our clothes, cooked our food, she did everything for us. I don't think I ever heard her complain a day in her life. She taught me responsibility towards my brother and sisters and the community.
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
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.
I write with as much objectivity as I can.
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.
Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.
Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.
I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
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.
I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
