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

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

For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.

. . . 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.

If you want to support a writer, produce the first five plays he writes.

There are always and only two trains running. There is life and there is death. Each of us rides them both. To live life with dignity, to celebrate and accept responsibility for your presence in the world is all that can be asked of anyone.

I am not a historian. I happen to think that the content of my mother's life - her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter - are all worthy of art.