My novels and poems are meant to be read aloud. That's why jazz musicians have been able to adapt my stuff.

I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

Don't they understand what fiction is?

You know you’ve reached the end of a relationship: when your lover now demands that your jokes be funny before they laugh.

I do make a concscious effort to be genuine among other comedians. If I write something or try something that doesn't feel like me, I stop doing it.

I am who I am who I am who am I Requesting some enlightenment Could I have been anyone other than me?

I think like, 'And we have some problems here on the earth we worry about? Compared to likenothing. Just be happy. Don't worry be happy right now

Only dead mathematics can be taught where the attitude of competition prevails: living mathematics must always be a communal possession.

Because you know, I’m your best friend, but you’re just not that badass, man.

It's the Simple things that are really effective. Try to remember that.

I have been struck by the way all the young people I've met through coming back to music are so much more generous-spirited with each other than I remembered people being. It gives me hope.

All the great things are simple.