I have walked majestically with kings and queens and presidents and other heads of states.

People get overwhelmed with folklore as fact. Take the Exodus. The Exodus did not occur. It could not have occurred. Wasn't necessary for it to occur. The Jews walked into Africa over a 16-mile land until they built the Suez Canal - that land is still there. Why would they have to leave by the sea. They didn't come by the sea. Certain people think you are against their religion when you use common sense.

We're all in a test. With or without God, we're in a test.

When I was able to go to school in my early years, my third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, convinced me that one day I would be a writer. I heard her, but I knew that I had to leave Georgia, and unlike my friend Ray Charles, I did not go around with 'Georgia on My Mind.'

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, African-American historians began to look at their people's history from their vantage point and their point of view.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

I have gone up in the Pyramids and the stones are so close together you can't force a playing card between them and (they are) in perfect alignment. So those people must have had some hydraulics or something. You take 20 men, put them around a big stone, their legs would get in the way. Even if they could lift it, 20 pairs of legs hitting against each other would throw it off balance. And they would not have it in exact alignment. Not even a fraction of an inch off.