Writer

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.

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.

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.

Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

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.

Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.

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.

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?

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 wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.

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.

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 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 had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.

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 write with as much objectivity as I can.