Our democratic richness arrives when we're able to comprehend our collective humanity accurately.

I don't know any women who don't think about what they look like, and I don't know any men who don't think about what women look like.

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

The point is, you have an ethnic heritage and you have a human heritage. Your human heritage includes everything of human value.

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

Your ethnic or sexual identity, what region of the country you're from, what your class is - those aspects of your identity are not the same as your aesthetic identity.

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