Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

So what this is is a 'road novel.' Eventually entire civilization (in the South) had been uprooted and people found security only in movement, ... That interested me enormously ... A friend from New Orleans, he said when he read the book, 'This is like Hurricane Katrina.'

If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.