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

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.

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.

My purpose is to paint the life of my people as I know it.

Words make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought.

If you understand or if you don'tIf you believe or if you doubtThere's a universal justiceAnd the eyes of truthAre always watching you

To live without regrets is impossible. To regret not trying is the worst regret of all.

Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another.

I look back at photographs and I remember at the time I thought I was not very attractive.

Course titles and even course descriptions often fail to reveal what is actually taught (much less learned).

Life sometimes separates people so that they can realize how much they mean to each other.

So far I’m not seeing a lot of difference between me and a carnival con-man.