If I were to give myself a pat on the back, it would be for sticking with bookmaking as my primary way of expressing myself over the span of fifty years.

I want kids to understand that making pictures is similar to making music; there are so many instruments and so many tunes that the possibilities for how you play are truly limitless.

I wanted to show that an African-American artist could make it in this country on a national level in the graphic arts. I want to be a strong role model for my family and for other African Americans.

I've always felt that if I worked hard enough and continued to refine my craft, while staying curious about our times and our world, I just might have something to contribute.

I never demonstrate how art should be made or what the outcome should look like. Instead, give kids the tools and the materials to make their own art. Have them experience the process.

Make it all about the work. Everything else will follow.

If you do the best work you can, the reward is ultimately your self-satisfaction - the sense that you have done the best you can. And then there's that piece of how others respond.

I feel the calmest when I'm drawing or when I'm creating images. I love connecting the mind with the hand and producing something - that is very comforting and centering for me.

We live in a time when there is an abundance of ways we can express ourselves.

African American writers and artists, by the very nature of what they do, will actually enhance or bring together people in a way that might be very, very healthy.

I try not to respond with a pep talk, such as, "Everyone has talent, just try, you'll see." I skirt those kinds of answers.

He felt as if he were paying for the privilege of music with portions of his life and body. But it was well worth it.

I'm Valerie Rye, ' she said, savoring the words. 'It's all right for you to talk to me.

When you see a child starving and you think government failed. But I think God failed, could not even fill the hunger of a child.

I do not walk like a duck.

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the Godly; there is no mirth like the mirth of believers.

That's what Google taught me. Aim higher. Udacity is my playground - to radically experiment and find out. I've seen the light.

The history of PR is... a history of a battle for what is reality and how people will see and understand reality.

Without society, and a society to our taste, men are never contented.

All you have to do is open your heart, just like you opened your legs.