...one of the best things about running is that no matter how fast you've run in the past, running fast in the future does not come easily or with any guarantees.

I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.

And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.