I have a whole lot of fun in trying to serve others and just keeping it funky, trying to keep it real, trying to ensure that we are able to be ourselves and get beyond these deodorized discourses and deodorized spaces that put on masks.

As human beings, everyone has stuff coming at them, and a certain kind of fear.

We’re beings toward death, we’re … two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms.

The love of wisdom is a way of life; that is to say, it's a set of practices that have to do with mustering the courage to think critically about ourselves, society, and the world; mustering the courage to empathize; the courage, I would say, to love; the courage to have compassion with others, especially the widow and the orphan, the fatherless and the motherless, poor and working peoples, gays and lesbians, and so forth - and the courage to hope.

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

Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, a whole host of brilliant, courageous critics say all kinds of things, and he [Barack Obama] treats them with respect. They get invited to the White House. I say the same thing, he talks to me like I'm a Cub Scout.

Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.