I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.

Long before I was a success, my parents made me feel like I could be one.

The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

There is really nothing more to say - except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

You are your best thing

Black people's music is in a class by itself and always has been. There's nothing like it. The reason for that is because it was not tampered with by white people. It was not on the media. It was not anywhere except where black people were. And it is one of the art forms in which black people decided what is good in it. Nobody told them. What surfaced and what floated to the top, were the giants and the best.