I think that if you feel imaginatively towards a subject, you really shouldn't do it in a journalistic context, because then you're just fabricating, and that's crazy.

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.

You may never live long enough to discover who you are, but by the time you reach middle age you will hopefully realize who you are not.

They (the French) have taken genius instead of reason for their guide, adopted experiment instead of experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer lightning to light.

Some days we lose all at once and somedays we get all back at once. But either way, Accept it.

A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.

Without freedom of the press, there can be no representative government.

If your short-term goals are too high, you may give up too soon. If your long-term goals are too low, they may not give you enough enthusiasm to drive you over the bumps in the road along the way.

When you're sharing a mud hole with a wildebeest derriere in sub-Saharan Africa, that's a living hell.

This is your heart.Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the key.

I did work in a bakery for one day. But the boss went off and when he came back I was lying on the floor eating cakes.