Now the writing in the head, I definitely do every day, thinking about how I want to phrase something or how I'd like to rephrase something I've already written.

I also wanted to do something that I hadn't really seen in almost any black novels, which was a complex love story in which both people were extremely intelligent and talented and understood a lot of things and were still at odds getting it together.

Big business, for all its lobbying, is often put in line by investigative reporting, public scandals and multi-million-dollar judgments in court against those who put products on the market that are dangerous to their buyers.

The grand irony, however, is that Southern segregation was not brought to an end, nor redneck violence dramatically reduced, by violence.

What we need in America is a renaissance. We need to go forward by going backward.

When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.

People don't really think other people are the same.