Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape their direction. All great writers demand great critics.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large.

A good woman keeps her mind right and her body tight.

Sometimes, we think faster than what we write.

The universe looks more and more like a great thought rather than a great machine.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

You always have to have faith in your own abilities and that has to be evident to your players.

Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.

For youth, sexual love is whim; for the aged, luxury.

Sometimes hate hurts more than love feels good. Just have to realize it's because we're more used to love. Let the haters stumble by.

With any half-hour comedy, it kind of takes on its own life and finds itself.

Perhaps, perhaps this would be the one to pull me out of my plunge.