I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration - joy and pain - sit side by side.

There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.

You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people.

Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public

Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.

Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.

None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)

The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration.

We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.

We are who we are because somebody loved us.

A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.

All the faces on the photographs have changed, To not confuse it all, the names remain the same

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.

You don't change your style by changing your bag. You change it with your clothes.

When I was planning Family Viewing, the Ontario Film Development Corporation came into existence.

The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is in the way we feel and the way we remember.

A fish probably has no means of apprehending the existence of water; it is too deeply immersed in it.

Money has never been a huge inspiration for me.

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.

Good shot, bad luck and hell are the five basic words to be used in a game of tennis, though these, of course, can be slightly amplified.