All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.

So somehow, things that seem extraneous to the play in reality are not. The scene lasts 37 minutes, and you only need 12 minutes of that for the plot. But if you pull the rest of it out, it's not my play.

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.

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

Suffice it to say, I'm not poor.

I cried a river of tears but he was too heavy to float on them. So I dragged him with me these years across an ocean.