I remember from my father's funeral that the minister kept using a metaphor about life of a prism. And I took that away like a cherished image.

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.

You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.

If you say a word often enough it becomes you.

I think what I am is a "convener"; I like to convene people around ideas.

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

Hope is when you look out the window and you go, 'It doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to go beyond what I see to give people visions of what could be.'