No one needs to teach you to be mean; we need to be taught to be kind.

I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher.

I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of "I want to tell the people."

And like an unfaithful mate, once a car has let you down you never sort of trust it again.

I'm an old storyteller. I tell the story. It's about the story.

Being Black and poor is, I think, radically different from being anything else and poor. Poor, to most Blacks, is a state of mind. Those who accept it are poor; those who struggle are middle class.

Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.