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.

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.

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.

I'm a draftsperson. And also, I really respond to love.

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

Your mind is a ship

So ‘fatal’ only kills you two out of three times these days? That’s good to know.

They said" Your Anger could Destroy you.." Even if my Brain designed it to Destroy my enemy.

I think in society we tend to put ourselves in boxes and corners and restrict ourselves, and we constantly feel the need to not say this or not wear this.

The drumming helps a lot when I'm producing songs or writing songs. My knowledge of drums helps more in that aspect, (although) I don't know, man; I'm not great at any of them.

I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject.

Eighty's a landmark and people treat you differently than they do when you're seventy-nine. At seventy-nine, if you drop something it just lies there. At eighty, people pick it up for you.

New York City has the most beautiful women.

There was something special about being in a strange place, all alone in a mass of people even if you had just screwed up your life, or perhaps especially if you had just screwed up your life.