It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is.

Prajna is insight into the world. And a lot of that insight has to do with karma and the way karma affects our lives.

There is something very quiet and reserved and pessimistic about Obama's temperament that is deeply un-American. There are those people who claim, "Oh, he wasn't born here" - all that is nonsense.

You think about every piece of idiomatic speech adopted by white men over the past ten or twenty years; virtually all of it comes from hip-hop.

The truth is that an intellectual life is available to almost anyone, almost anywhere, if they work hard enough and are given some kind of access point.

I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs.

The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.