True power is the power to empower others.

Our visual and musical artists have no incentive to be educated. So what we get is a bunch of uneducated artists inspiring misinformation, miseducation and illiteracy.

I don't think that we should look to celebrities to solve problems that are on our end of the street.

Real artists offer authenticity, not just money.

There's a duty and an obligation to community that we must teach our children to honor no matter how far they go. Life is like baseball: You only score when you leave home and return home.

New York is the financial capital of the world. Everything moves so fast, and the music is fast, and some of it is for money.

When I think about a Chicago sound, I think about the Great Migration from the South. Many of Chicago's black artists are from Mississippi, Arkansas, and with them was brought blues and gospel music.

There's an economy of violence. It's sexy. It's being exploited.

Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy. (Page 57)

It's my favorite role - being a mom.

I think God is in us. I think we manifest God in every moment.

On one tour, I was collecting stories about pet monkeys. You'd be surprised how many people have stories about monkeys. The problem is, most monkey stories end tragically.

The impulse to share the lives of the poor, the desire to make social service, irrespective of propaganda, express the spirit of Christ, is as old as Christianity itself.

feelings of man are always pure and the brightest to the meeting time and Farewell.

There is nothing that making men rich and strong but that which they carry inside of them. True wealth is of the heart, not of the hand.

Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.

When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle atop some crumbling building, spring to life a resuscitated angel.

I dress up with a conscience when I think you'll be watching. I say all the right things, I don't know what I mean.