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

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.

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.

I have to believe that when I finish a project, that I will not only grow as an artist, but as a person.

Love me like today is the last day we can see stars in the sky, let us sleep under them and throw ourselves into the oblivion and never again reach out for reality.

We both knew that what I said was the truth, as well as being a lie. The pure and honest answer was pinging between us, hovering above the weeds.

35mm film isn't ticking away so it's subconscious - performances are allowed to breathe in a much more real way I think.

In great cities men are more callous both to the happiness and the misery of others, than in the country; for they are constantly in the habit of seeing both extremes.

Lose yourself in the music, the moment - you own it.

Studios are mercurial kind of creatures. A lot of the times getting a movie out can be as much luck as anything else.

You can't change the past so change something you can. the future!

You must dare to do the thing you think cannot be done... as this is the only way to discover that there's nothing you can't do.

It is possible for love to grow and multiply if you work at it.

I don't really want to hang out with politicians. I'd rather go straight to hell, and not collect $200.