God Gived You The Seed. But The

There Are Some Really Great Books That Have Been Written About Slavery, But I Don't Think That The Discourse About It In Society Has Been Very Accurate Or Healthy. I Don't Think We've Come Up With Ways To Tell It That Don't Insult People Or Hit Them In The Wrong Way. Part Of The Problem Is That Most People Don't Really Understand What Slavery Was Anyway. Most White People Didn't Own Slaves. Slavery Was A Way Of Life, Just Like Driving Cars Is A Way Of Life Now. It Doesn't Mean That It Was Right.

There Has To Be Some Mystery In Life, Because The Joy Of Being A Writer And The Joy Of Being A Musician Is The Joy Of Discovery. I Don't Want Someone Discovering For Me What I Should Be Discovering On My Own. If A Person Is Discovering For Me, Then They're Living For Me. It's My Responsibility, Indeed It's My Privilege, To Go Out And Discover The World For Myself.

My Whole Family Was - We Grew Up In New York, But All My Relatives And All My Father And Stepfather's Family, They Were All From The South. So I Like That Old Black Voice, And I Love The Sort Of Old Black Man With A Corncob Pipe, Sitting There Telling A Whopper.

The Act Of Choosing What To Place In Your Piece When You're A Historian Or A Non-fiction Writer Already Renders It Into Fiction For Someone Else. In Some Ways Fiction Comes A Lot Closer To Reality. When You Start Talking About Something As Brutal As Slavery And Life In The American West, It's Really Important To Take A Non- Judgmental Stance. We Romanticize A Great Deal About Life In The American West, But I Thank God I Wasn't Living During That Time. No Matter What Color You Were, It Was Rough, Crude, Tough Living.

I'm Not Interested In Food. It's Just Fuel.