All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.

. . . what happened, of course, was that I was writing a play set in the 1940's that was supposed to be somehow representative of black American life, and I didn't have any women in there. And I knew that wasn't going to work.

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

Suffice it to say, I'm not poor.

You got to take the crookeds with the straights. That's what Papa used to say.

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

I write for myself and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.