I've never had any trouble opposing people I've been close to. I've never worried about offending or bothering people I feel strongly about.

We've been taught in America that big is best. That's why people have to believe that they must live in the greatest country in the world, which is absolutely idiotic.

I think people involved with institutions find it harder to know the time to go than the time to come.

I was really worn down by an American society that is racist, smugly blind to it, and hugely self-satisfied.

Where does a black soul go to rest?

People need their history like they need air and food.

We all have to die, and I preferred to have just one death. It seems to me that to suffer insult without response is to die many deaths.

Something is very, very wrong with American culture. The signs are everywhere. I think the country is in almost terminal descent.

Americans don't bother to notice anybody else in the world.

I think the evangelicals want to provoke an immense global disaster to precipitate the second coming of Christ.

Democracy requires that if you who don't like the outcome of elections you have to tolerate it and then pursue your interest the next time around.

One must lose one's life in order to save it.

For me to get through the toughest periods in my life, I had to look within to find the energy to do it. I don't give up. Never have. Never will.

Right now, I feel like I can take on the world. Ambition is the perfect word for where I am in my life right now.

When I have worries, fears or a love affair, I have the luck of being able to transform it into a poem.

When we envy another, we make their virtue our vice.

They done Wrong Like ink from a busted pen Thrown away 'cause of someone else Used up But he come back Dressed in night Fine as a king With his queen The wrong Made right So right.

With patience bear what pains you have deserved, Grieve, if you will, over what's unmerited.

Desiring is a part of dreaming.

Ramadan is, in its essence, a month of humanist spirituality.

Music should be able to invoke the natural emotions in all human beings. Music is not notes fixed on apiece of paper.