Those who have something to say accept the fact that that's lonely. One already knows that there will be adversaries.

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

If you have done the best you can do and if you have gotten all you could extract from something, you have given all you had to give, then the time has come when you can do no more than say thank you and move on.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.