It's fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering

You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it.

I'm black, so, you know, I'm again with black folk, but it's a love that spills over to vanilla suburbs and red reservations and brown barrios and yellow slices.

I love my gay brothers. I love my lesbian sisters. I love my transvestite, my gender-bending folk. For me, it's a matter of embracing their humanity, allowing them to choose in such a way that they are in the driver's seat regarding their lives.

Black people have been working hard for decades.

I'm a bluesman, which means that I put an emphasis on the minor keys.

The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world.