Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

I'm a black American playwright. I couldn't be anything else. I make my art out of black American culture; they're all cut out of the same cloth. That's who I am; that's who I write about.

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

I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.

I think all in all, one thing a lot of plays seem to be saying is that we need to, as black Americans, to make a connection with our past in order to determine the kind of future we're going to have. In other words, we simply need to know who we are in relation to our historical presence in America.

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