Money and art are far apart.

How still, How strangely still The water is today, It is not good For water To be so still that way. ~ "Sea Calm

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.

The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it.

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.

Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.