I don't write for a particular audience.

I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet.

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.

I think that's the core of black aesthetics: the ability to improvise. That is what has enabled our [black people's] survival.

There's no idea in the world that is not contained by black life. I could write forever about the black experience in America.

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.

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.