I have a novel that I can write. It's about three soldiers from Somalia. Some babies have been disappearing up on 144th Street, and I speculate later on what happened to them and how they might have been got back. These guys are dead, all three, and they have a chance in the afterlife to do something they should have done when they were alive.
I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.
I thought that some of my best records was when there wasn't a lot of work being done on it, like 'Winter in America' and 'Secrets' and when there weren't a whole lot of people in the studios.
As for money - when I have it, it's great. When I don't, I go get some. I've been a dishwasher, a gardener, a cleaner.
Everything that's bad for you catches on too quickly in America, because that's the easiest thing to get people to invest in, the pursuits that are easy and destructive, the ones that bring out the least positive aspects of people.
I was born in Chicago, but I was raised in a town called Jackson, Tennessee. And a lot of these changes that were necessary and talked about it as important have been made, like, people go to school where they want to go. They work for equal pay, they work for - they can go school and have an equal shot at a job.
I tour more than I need to, more than is good for you. But it's my favorite part of music. I much prefer it to studio work.
I cannot afford to watch Fox News.
The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.
You know what has made me the happiest I've ever been? Seeing my son and daughter graduate from college. More than wanting them to be educated, I wanted them to be nice people. To see that they have become both is just a wonderful thing.
If you aren't having no fun, die, because you're running a worthless program, far as I'm concerned.
I was a piano player before I was a poet.
I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.
I found my grandmother dead. It shook me up. I got up to make her breakfast, and I knew it was strange that she wasn't stirring. I went in to wake her, and she was laying in rigor mortis, and I'm done. I called next door, and the kid picked up the phone, and I was so wild, he dropped it.
I don't mind being criticized. I enjoy being criticized personally, not by rumor.
I was one of the first three black students to go to an all-white school in Tennessee.
Your life has to consist of more than 'Black people should unite.' You hope they do, but not twenty-four hours a day.
