The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.

I'd like to do something involving jazz. But books are how I earn my living, and I'd like to stay with the horse I rode in on.

If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.

God gived you the seed. But the watering and caring of that seed is up to you.

I felt like a Tinker toy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt.

It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.

The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch.