People don't really think other people are the same.

You can meet a young person who goes to school and is really enthusiastic, but if a sufficiently strong personality convinces them that this is a waste of time, that person might flunk out.

If there's an intellectual highway, there's also an intellectual subway.

You'd never know that listening to people in the UN but tribalism is the father of racism.

Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.

As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.

Your ethnic or sexual identity, what region of the country you're from, what your class is - those aspects of your identity are not the same as your aesthetic identity.

Our society has gotten to the point where we might soon become less and less shocked by any kind of violence.

When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.

All of us are made up of the stories that we listen to, the ones we disagree with and the ones that we agree with.

There is an overflowing grace, for every great work.

Our abilities and possibilities are at one and the same time very limited and quite infinite dependent on the depth of our relationship to our 'self', others and life itself.

Adversity is a good school.

You go through things sometimes that make you aware of the really good things in life.

Donald Trump picked a remarkably nice guy in Mike Pence.

If a piece of worthless stone can bruise a cup of gold, its worth is not increased, nor that of the gold diminished.

I have one piece of advice for those of you who want to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award: Start early!

The blood of Christians is seed.

I'm outa here, I'm only playing one song, and I'm not coming back for ten years! And when I come back..!

Learn the art of the pitch and of messaging.