To be a survivor as an African American man - maybe any man - you have to be pretty tough. Or at least that's what we all understand.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We have other kinds of languages, like mathematics, like music, like art, but there's always that gap.

Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and if we screw up we can get in a world of trouble - we're very intense dreamers. That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is. There is no American or Frenchhistory. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.

There are still horrible things that go on because of the myth of race, but we don't have to succumb totally.

Things seem to fall apart inevitably.

If Mumia Abu-Jamal has nothing important to say, why are so many powerful people trying to shut him up?