I think we need to de-center the idea of US sovereignty.

Africa, being the major target of colonial plunder, therefore becomes a major source of conflict.

I shudder to think where we people of African descent would be without our allies in the international community. It's been our everything, quite frankly.

Cuba was in some ways a de facto state of the United States before 1959, given its proximity and given its neocolonial status.

I think - particularly in terms of the destiny of Africans in North America - our destiny has also been shaped indelibly by global alliances.

Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

As we transcended and transformed from Neanderthal so will future humans transcend to a new level of consciousness and transform into a super human or homo-cosmicus.

Every man loves what he is good at.

I tended to write the book in these bursts of two or three months at a time. So I would know, or at least feel securely, that for the next few months I was at least going to have a few hours a day.

You can really get poked in the back and not feel it very much, but just a feather around your lips and you really do feel it.

The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten.

You cannot innovate by copying.

For every role, I brought certain elements of the character. Even on White Collar over six years, I tried to keep the set fun and breezy and Howard Hawks-y and very of the tone of the show.

Hip-hop has a feeling element, it's not just about knowing music. It's not like classical music or jazz where you can go on raw energy.

I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.