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.

I wish all critics, no matter their color, were more sophisticated when it comes to the moral questions a film like 'St. Anna' is trying to raise.

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

Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!

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.

My family is my career.

My whole family was - we grew up in New York, but all my relatives and all my father and stepfather's family, they were all from the South. So I like that old Black voice, and I love the sort of old Black man with a corncob pipe, sitting there telling a whopper.