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

I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.

I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.

Nothing improves your writing, I think, as much as your keeping writing.

It's not a ladder we're climbing, it's literature we're producing. . . . We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.

The future is in good hands.

My work is a part of me and I know it. I have no reason to try to pick one part of me out from the rest. I only see my work, or rather I should say I see my work only telling my part of the human experience.