Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.

The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both.

Blues is the bedrock of everything I do. All the characters in my plays, their ideas and their attitudes, the stance that they adopt in the world, are all ideas and attitudes that are expressed in the blues.

The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.

When the sins of our fathers visit us We do not have to play host. We can banish them with forgiveness As God, in his His Largeness and Laws.

All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything.

You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.