Our lives preserved. How it was and how it will be. Passing it along in the relay. That is what I work to do: to produce stories that save our lives.

The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible

Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I've seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges.

(M)aybe we too busy being flowers or fairies or strawberries instead of something honest and worthy of respect . . . you know . . . like being people.

Revolution begins with the self, in the self.... We'd better take the time to fashion revolutionary selves, revolutionary lives, revolutionary relationships. Mouth don't win the war.

Writing is a legitimate way, an important way, to participate in the empowerment of the community that names me.

The only proper mask to wear in life is your own damn face.

TAKE HEART TO FLAT OUT DECIDE TO BE WELL AND STRIDE INTO THE FUTURE, SANE AND WHOLE

The job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible.

When you dream, you dialogue with aspects of yourself that normally are not with you in the daytime and you discover that you know a great deal more than you thought you did.

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there.

Action achieves ambition.

After four thousand years we can’t even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer.

One of my friends at the Compound has a photographic memory. Everything she ever sees, reads, or hears, she remembers forever in perfect detail.

I'm great at lying to myself.

You are always learning there is a lot of grey don't take things for granted.

Winning isn't imperative, but getting tougher in the fourth quarter is.

The word rattled in my head like rocks in an oatmeal box.

Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private library, which is a reflection of their minds and their selves.

I will heighten my life by helping others heighten theirs

I love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I'd rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I'll leave it to them.