James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world.

The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how I see it. Otherwise, I don't know why you do it.

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you

The torture of being the unseen object, and the constantly observed subject.

My responsibility is to truth and beauty.

In America, black is a country.

I'd say I'm a revolutionary optimist. I believe that the good guys -the people- are going to win.

There is no depth to education without art.

Thought is more important than art....To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.

All thinking people oppose terrorism both domestic & international but one should not be used to cover the other

You've got drama too?' 'Doesn't everyone?' 'A side effect of breathing, I guess.

Law, rather than harnessing the passions, is increasingly pressed into their service.

April Comes like an idiot babbling and strewing flowers.

If you don't have an ego, you're a wino.

I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.

I was a barefoot earth child for a couple of years.

Being critical of art is a way of showing art respect.

I'm a cat, and you have to earn my trust.

If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?

Nothing is more fallacious than wealth. To-day it is for thee; tomorrow it is against thee. It arms the eyes of the envious every where. It is a hostile comrade, a domestic enemy.