Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA.

As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

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.

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

But there are a number of attitudes that should not be emotionally or psychologically ingested by young people.

Louis Armstrong, who learned to be in exquisite dress, came from the bottom, and he's not a trash can.

If you're going to get in the ring and try to take the belt, you have to prepare to get hit.