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.

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

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

I ain't never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.

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.

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