The mark of fear is not easily removed.

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

The mark of fear is not easily removed.

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

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

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

Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.

A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth - and that's a myth.

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

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.

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

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

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 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 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.

I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.

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.

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.

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

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

The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.

Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

In fact I have nightmares about having children. I want to carry a baby and feel the life within me and in my dream, I do. But every time after it's born, there's this incredible fear, this pounding pulse of fear. It's a real bad nightmare.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

Democracy is stronger than terrorism, and we will not cower to the terrorists' campaign of fear.

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.

I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.

Right out of high school I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose.

Who sows fear, reaps weapons.

For any new technology there is always controversy and there always some fear associated with it. I think that's just the price of being first sometimes.

Knight without fear and without reproach.

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war but on the love of peace.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

My greatest fear is to be misunderstood.

I'll think, If this is his first punch, how are the others gonna feel? That's the only fear I have for myself.

We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.

Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God.

That was my fear, which is why when I was took over a book, I was always trying to tweak it a little bit so that it looked like I was trying to add something instead of keeping the status quo.

You know that day after day of, Oh God what am I going to do with myself feeling? The fear of the emptiness that it implies keeps me going.

Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me.