I don't know what makes fashion cruel, except I feel nothing but spiritual depletion around it. There's nothing enriching, spiritually.

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.

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

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 wanted to stay this way forever.Which, it turns out, was exactly five more minutes.

I write with all my heart

All sin is selfish, whether it be lying, cheating, stealing, immorality, covetousness, or idleness. Sin is for one's own ends, not for another's-certainly not for the Lord's ends.

When everything comes from Jesus, it is spiritual insanity to have any form of pride.

Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.

The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.

The best imitation in the world is not half as good as a poor original.

Nothing limits achievement like small thinking; nothing expands possibilities like unleashed imagination.

While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His "Morning" and his "Night" disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.

For people of different faiths to coexist, it's going to take maturity, wisdom, and patience. All of which come, eventually, with tolerance. And it's a process of time.