I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.

Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not, permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

Home is memory, home is your history, home is where you work. Some people want to abandon it and become truly local. But the questions are all there.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

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.

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

The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.