Who I really am keeps surprising me.

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

If you're creating a slave situation, you would almost never bring women. And if we look at Slavery for example, we look at the Greeks and the Romans, right? It was always men. They never brought any women. Because women carry the seeds of the revolution, right? And if you have the men by themselves, then you can do what the French did with the Blackfeet, which is breed them out.

Rage is to writers what water is to fish.

I just think she was a wonderful woman. What I think of when I think of Nina [Simone] is someone that I could relate to, who didn't want anything from me, that could relate to me because I didn't want anything from her. It was nice.

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

But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.