All you have is a gift a to give.

The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak, it means then that if you have a prophetic sensibility, you are committed to loving others and if you love others, you hate injustice.

Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense.

So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.

I think it's important not to view Martin Luther King Jr. in a narrow political manner. His fundamental commitment is to a radical love of humanity, and especially of poor and working people. And that radical love leads him to a radical analysis of power, domination and oppression. What's difficult is to situate him ideologically under a particular category.

It's so easy to begin to demonize someone you think is so far removed and as the demonization begins to expand, it ends up being everybody but your friends. After a while everybody else but you. That is a slippery slope that is so easy to slide down, and that's what is dangerous.

And as a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can never be reduced to anything.