A good many people voted for [Barack] Obama, and I'm not only talking about the black vote. A lot of people voted for Obama because of our history of racial discrimination in this country.

I always wanted to be a lawyer,but I certainly never wanted to be a trapeze performer.

There is a seamless web to life.. all life is sacred.

I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had

A lot of people in the adult population have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights.

Do not categorize about music. You take each musician at the time and open yourself to that musician.

I was introduced to jazz, and that's become a basic concern and passion of mine ever since.

My parents were Orthodox Jews but not very regular Orthodox Jews. I was bar mitzvahed and all that. But God was hardly ever mentioned in my family. Franklin D. Roosevelt was.

The media ignores what is really going on.

I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact.

What we have now in America is a surveillance society.

Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.

I think hip hop should be a living word. And what I mean by the living word is like yo, you gotta have the words that provide life.

I don't really ever live my life in fear. I really live my life in gratitude and feeling positive for the most part.

If there was one thing I refused to be, it was an insignificant footnote in some boy's history.

Well, when one's lost, I suppose it's good advice to stay where you are until someone finds you.

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.

I know fashion is a material thing, but we live in a material world and I love clothes.

I wake up sometimes with an idea and then I write it down. It's not necessarily easy, but when you focus on something it comes.

Four ducks on a pond, / A grass-bank beyond, / A blue sky of spring, / White clouds on the wing: / What a little thing / To remember for years - / To remember with tears!.

Photographs put time into such a perspective. They humble us and our selfish memories.