My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.

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

As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say . . . as long as he looks to white folks for approval . . . then he ain't never gonna find out who he is and what he's about.

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

Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.

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.

I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible.