I go through periods listening to specific types of music. Because I'm a musician, listening to music is... it's a bit like work for me. A little bit.

Most of my work is done when everyone else is asleep.

I split my time between a small town in New Jersey and New York City.

My main problem with fiction is that once my characters get moving, you just have to follow them along and get out of the way of the story, but sometimes they pull me in too many directions, and I need to focus.

If you can whistle the melody, then the song will stick. But if you need a bunch of machines to make it sound good, you're probably not writing anything that's going to last a long time.

I type most of my books for the first chapter or two - I use a manual typewriter for the first 50 pages or so - and then I move to the computer. It helps me keep the work lean so I don't end up spending 10 pages describing a leaf.

Writing teaches writing.

James Brown's music still sounds as fresh and as good and as new as it did when he first created it.

The hard part about writing about a guy like John Brown is that he was so serious, and his cause was so serious, that most of what's been written about him is really serious and, in my opinion, a little bit boring.

I can't be a creative person if I'm a celebrity.

When you tell them you're a writer, they say, 'What have you written?' And then you've got to tell them what you've done. I don't ask a plumber what he does. Then I have to explain what I've done, and I haven't really, you know. I've just told some stories.

You can't write just anything. Your story needs structure.

I'm not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth.

I read more history books than anything else.

People process pain differently. My family, we were pretty humorous about things that went on.

I don't come from Lake Wobegon, and that world is not mine. It's not that funny to me. It's funny to other people, and I'm not judging it, but the world that I come from is not considered funny by other people as well. There's so much pain in it.

If you don't have humor, you're not going to make it. You're going to be one of those people who walks around with your head about to explode.

I just don't see the point in sitting around hollering the blues over things you have no control over. It's all in God's hands.

Don't get me started on Americans and war. One of the things I learnt over in Italy is how they mythologised the war so that it's all good old gung-ho guys from Omaha and ignored everyone else's role.

As a writer, you have to be near people and hear stuff. I'm a hamburger and cheese kind of fellow; I'm not Henry David Thoreau.

The black church will accept anybody.

The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.

I wish all critics, no matter their color, were more sophisticated when it comes to the moral questions a film like 'St. Anna' is trying to raise.

I'm proud of 'Miracle at St. Anna' and I loved it; there's no question in my mind it's as good as any movie that came out in 2007.