...I have wanted to believe people could make their dreams come truethat problems could be solved. However, this is a national illness. As Americans, we believe all problems can be solved, that all questions have answers.

I don't see black people as victims even though we are exploited. Victims are flat, one- dimensional characters, someone rolled over by a steamroller so you have a cardboard person. We are far more resilient and more rounded than that. I will go on showing there's more to us than our being victimized. Victims are dead.

When you get up in the morning, you merely put on your clothes. When a colored man gets up in the morning, he puts on his armor.

I marvel at the many ways we, as black people, bend but do not break.

First it is necessary to stand on your own two feet. But the minute a man finds himself in that position, the next thing he should do is reach out his arms.

...one of my motivating forces has been to recreate the world I know into a world I wish I could be in. Hence my optimism and happy endings.

It is true that no one can harm the person who wears armor. But no one can help him either.