To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice.

I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive.

There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform

People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.

America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep.

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.