All of us are made up of the stories that we listen to, the ones we disagree with and the ones that we agree with.

You can meet a young person who goes to school and is really enthusiastic, but if a sufficiently strong personality convinces them that this is a waste of time, that person might flunk out.

If there's an intellectual highway, there's also an intellectual subway.

You'd never know that listening to people in the UN but tribalism is the father of racism.

Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.

As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.

Your ethnic or sexual identity, what region of the country you're from, what your class is - those aspects of your identity are not the same as your aesthetic identity.

Our society has gotten to the point where we might soon become less and less shocked by any kind of violence.

When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.

When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm.

There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its course a quiet conscience.

It is easier to wipe a thousand tears from your eyes than to wipe a single tear from your soul.

Loving someone is not tough but the real courage is to be with that person forever.

I'm not really opposed to people changing their minds. I'm much more concerned with people who never change their minds no matter what new information is available.

When I write I like to just say everything that people think about but never express vocally. I just get deep into it; I'm a bit obsessive about music.

To stay present in everyday life, it helps to be deeply rooted within yourself; otherwise, the mind, which has incredible momentum, will drag you along like a wild river.

The secret is to make sure the business is running to perfection, with or without me.

My wife she's fat. Why, if she lost a few pounds, she'd be perfectly round.

It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say 'I' into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.