Even in my adult years, when I heard a white person speaking in a Southern accent I was initially suspicious.

Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.

A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently.

As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well.

I had a deep prejudice against the South. It's taken me many years to get over that, be more open and thoughtful.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

One of the earliest lessons I learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back.

You have to be a minor superhero just to get to be a dignified man, and that's kind of exacerbated for men of color.

All Stories are True.

I believe - what did Faulkner say? "The past is not even past."

Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable.

Every traveler should make their own observation.

Over the wintry forest, winds howl in rage with no leaves to blow.

She used to say she could taste sleep and that it was as delicious as a BLT on fresh French bread.

You get to decide where your time goes. You can either spend it moving forward, or you can spend it putting out fires. You decide. And if you don't decide, others will decide for you.

The people of New York took a big chance on me. And I'm well aware of that.

I didn't know I wanted to be a hairdresser. I was always interested in fashion and imagery in a very naive way, but it was always an attraction, like glitter balls.

I just want to create amazing music that speaks and defines who I am. I want it to be based on my life and/or what I am going through at that specific time.

Being a happy warrior, you also have a lot of fun in what you do because you believe in what you're doing.

Let your failures refine you, not define you.

Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence.