For most of my life, I've thought of myself as pretty cool.

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

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.

I think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.

I would put books on par with chocolate, because a good book is delicious.

There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.

Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.