I don't make a lot of money, but I get to have freedom.

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.

People on foot, on bikes, in cars, on planes-all chasing freedom.

Accept only as much ‘cleanliness’ that it won't cause you to worry if it became dirty. Maintain ‘cleanliness’ such that and only to the point that it does not burden you into bondage.

It is logical to look for a green fowl in a dark room even if you know the chance of finding a green fowl in a dark room is slim.

You understand the logic behind the illogical, Alyssa. It's in your nature to find tranquility amid the madness. And that's what we're doing here. We are giving our food a fighting chance.

She prayed to the gods of love and the gods of destruction, for they are one and the same.

I challenge record companies to show me evidence of a single penny they've lost due to Napster.

I need to tell a story. It's an obsession. Each story is a seed inside of me that starts to grow and grow, like a tumor, and I have to deal with it sooner or later.

The historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don't know about, but wish to know about in a way that they can understand.

If the poor boy cannot come to education, education must go to him