I kept wanting to push my image as validity; I wanted to see my portrait on a wall and know it was okay.

For a while, I was nervous about portraying women because of the objectification that automatically comes with it, whether the artist intends or not.

I needed to create something I could take with me wherever I went.

Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness and your black presence.

I dont think about race before I start drawing. I think about how to make that mark to fit whatever purpose I need it to fulfill.

The graphic style itself is influenced by a lot of very layered and detailed comics that I read as a kid, like Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue.

I moved around a lot when I was a child; two of the houses I grew up in have totally disappeared. One was burnt in a riot, and the other was pulled down.

It is hard to produce work in New York. You kind of have to center yourself - do some Zen meditation exercises and just focus. It is very distracting, and money, of course, is an issue.

Never chase a person that doesn't know your worth because the moment you catch him you will always feel you were never good enough.

It is only through love that we can attain to communion with God. All living knowledge of God rest upon this foundation: that we experience Him in our lives as Will-to-love.

Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity.

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning.

I'm not a Hollywood director. I'm an in spite of Hollywood director.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

The fans have been great with me. I think they appreciate that I don't take an at-bat off.

God made only one you and He threw the mold away.

Only those who have the courage to fail greatly achieve greatly.

The roots of tobacco plants must go clear through to hell. Satan's principal agent Dyspepsia must have charge of this branch of the vegetable kingdom.