The function of the artist is to organize the facets of life according to his imagination.

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.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

The belief that the world was created yesterday seems to hold great appeal to those born at that time.

King shrugged and looked back at Harlen. "Please tell me you have a plan. Because my baby girl really likes to color with me.

We need leaders, we need political leaders and we need business leaders, and my hope for this book is that it helps create that next generation of business leaders that will lead us into the future.

Some people want to amass a great amount of wealth and make a great looking obituary. I'm going to die with more money than is good to leave my son.

I found music to be the therapy of choice.

A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision.

Adversity is an opportunity for heroism.

Automatically everybody thinks of me as an actress who is trying to sing. And if I weren't me I'd probably think the same thing.

Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it.