But what difference does it make? ... When you're mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.

Some things in this world just ain't meant to be, not in the times we want 'em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that's to come. There's a prize at the end of all of it, but still, that's a heavy load to bear.

Music and writing do fold together in the sense that you have to have a certain level of skill in order to execute your ideas and you need a medium. The idea of improvisation is one that many writers fall into, and I improvise a great deal when I'm writing, but there's a structural framework that I'm working around, and that takes more time than the actual writing. Once the characters get to yapping and talking, they'll move from one room to the next, and I just have to make sure that the house is built. That's really hard, that's the kind of thing that sits with you all day long.

When you're interviewing someone, even your mother - you have to sort of deal with you have to get some objective space from yourself and the person but you also have to find what's the best way to get the information from that person.

My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.

The black church will accept anybody.

Sometimes it seemed like the truth was a bandy-legged soul who dashed from one side of the world to the other and I could never find him.