The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author but also the self, as it were, of the race.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large.

When life gives you lemons, chunk it right back.

Suddenly, everything was beautiful. The way she viewed the world was nothing more but a reflection of herself.

A word in earnest is as good as a speech

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.

You are not going to see me puffing around the pitch. There is a saying in Bulgaria that great quality doesn’t require much effort.

Life, to me, is never one color. Even in the saddest moments, you can have a chuckle. And in the happiest moments, you can shed a tear.

Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance

Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

I think therapy is a rather misguided notion of capitalist societies whereby the self-indulgent examination of one's life supersedes the actual living of said life.