Challenging is good, like good conversation, yes? Who wants to have dinner with the same old easy listening music sounding friends all the time?

I think you're not really teaching anyone unless you're learning yourself.

For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don't like, babies who throw up on you again and again, but whom you cannot punish, because they're babies.

I was so well loved by my mother that if people have any expectations of me I really don't notice because I'm hardest on myself.

Inspiration takes many forms, but it's rarely pure.

One of the things I noticed when I worked at Vibe was that backstage at a fashion show, they always referred to the black models as "black girls." I thought, "They never say 'white girls.'

Images are really powerful. People fall in love with images, and as a way of falling in love with someone because they're like an image.

People are quick to make monuments of anything they live long enough to control.

Who says reading should be easy? Shouldn't it challenge you as hard sometimes as love. Maybe "hard" is not the right word in this context. Ha!

There were so few black men who were successful and who successfully conveyed black male fear - how America can make you feel crazy, and how America can create interesting levels of contradiction.

I'm a draftsperson. And also, I really respond to love.

Its true that love doesn't come easily. Its equally hard to just let it go. Ironically, its just not in your hand.

Of course it's better to be good. I know it ism but it's sometimes so hard to believe a thing even when you know it.

Like the zodiac sign?' Percy asked. 'I'm a Leo.''No, stupid, ' Leo said, 'I'm a Leo. You're a Percy.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family friends and society are the natural enemies of a writer. He must be alone uninterrupted and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

I have to say that I reject somewhat the distinction between something called art and something called public art. I think all art demands and desires to be seen.

Religion is spelled DO. Christianity is spelled DONE. One endlessly works to earn love. The other simply receives it!

Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.

I kill kings and presidents first, and next all capitalists.

Perhaps living souls had greater phantom powers than the dead.

Gentleness brings victory to him who attacks, and safety to him who defends. Those whom Heaven would save, it fences round with gentleness.