The essence of art is to recapturel the fantasy and the imagination of a child again, but without the innocence of a child.

You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from.

When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time.

What I've attempted to do is establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic.

The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.

Black art has always existed. It just hasn't been looked for in the right places.

Art is the soul of a people.

The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?

Sometimes the mind relives things very clearly for us...There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others.

Painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

You don't paint what you see, you paint what you feel.

Your body is a temple and I'm in need of serious prayer.

The unrequited love of ones' only living offspring has its own particular slow acid burn

That's a traditional Samoan dance. I was lucky that I was able to fly my cousins, who are professional dancers, up from Hawaii and they were able to be in the movie with me. We had a great time.

Our strength is that we don't have any weaknesses. Our weakness is that we don't have any real strengths.

Let me ... warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.

He will always know as we know now that in the heat of battle he did not fail when mateship and duty called.

I claim to know my millions. All the hours of the day I am with them. They are my first care and God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions.

As the largest and most developed democracies of Asia (India and Japan), we have a mutual stake in each other's progress and prosperity.

On the whole, life is unfair in the way it works out. It is a game played without an umpire!