My mom, God rest her soul - she liked nicknames. In the womb she named me Skip. There was another black guy in Piedmont, W.Va., and his name was Skip. They called him Big Skip, and I was Little Skip.

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.

Who wanted to be smiled at by the girl that trailed shadows like pets, conjured snakes and waited for Death, her bridegroom, to steal her from these walls?

I am really looking forward to driving another of my father's car at the show in Rotterdam.

The older you get, the easier it is to spot the phonies. And I just think, how unpleasant for them.

I've done some music for films and I really enjoy doing it.

You can always pound out demos and send them to record companies, but most of the successful bands I've seen are the ones that can sustain themselves.

Each generation of humanity takes the earth as trustees... We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.

Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.

I measure the amount of shows I should do by my hair. If my hair isn't good for campaigns and editorials, then obviously I am not going to look good.

A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.

I can't be anybody but myself.