I'm a black American playwright. I couldn't be anything else. I make my art out of black American culture; they're all cut out of the same cloth. That's who I am; that's who I write about.

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.

Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.

You get to the point where your demons, which are terrifying, get smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back holds up.

Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.

You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.

There is no movement without our own resistance.

Every generation reinvents the wheel - and in the process it often adds to rather than subtracts from a woman's burdens.

Love your children-and let them know you love them. Children who experience love find it far easier to believe God loves them.

Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square.

Time, ain't nothin, but time. It's a verse with no rhyme, and it all comes down to you.

Ideas are really what interest me in producing a band, if I can bring something productive to the project.

Seek spiritual riches within. What you are is much greater than anyone or anything else you have ever yearned for.

It seems to me that actual democracy is where all of us get to participate and it's not just a sort of a blunt little dry hump in a ballot box, but an actual penetrative process.

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