Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.

For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.

I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.

Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.

I think some of our most talented people are not going to pick the arts as a way that they're going to spend their lives.

Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work.

When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country.