The anger and fear are so global. And of course, we live where we live and there's a hierarchy to who is worth what. It's been going on for a long, long time.

All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.

I don't write to put it in a drawer, I hope that people see it.

People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.

I'm not searching for the truth.That's too much pressure .

Why are the mainstream buzz things rarely contemporary? It doesn't happen very often. It's hard to feel culpable or implicated or even apathetic.

I think there's nothing new going on. Except that, you're even more public than you've ever been.There's some good and some bad to that.

If New York is the City That Never Sleeps, then Los Angeles is the City That's Always Passed Out on the Couch.

It's so hard to say what you really mean. For any number of reasons: to protect yourself, or if you just can't find the words.

Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.

In The Sellout I tried to capture how we can talk and see race, how we see urbanity, and how we see our history.

There is nothing frightening in the dark if you just face it.

Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when don't want them to.

I don’t want forever. I never did… I just want right now.

And I just think that to introduce an unknown Shakespeare is thrilling, too - not to do Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, to do the richer Shakespeare. People will come to this and not know the story.

Repentance is the biggest punishment of ideal man.

Faith is something a lot of people relate to as a God-thing, but it's also faith in yourself.

Rudeness is what gets to me [when someone being rude to me in a supermarket]. Yeah. That one does get to me, I have to say.

If you can't join them, beat them.

There are hearts to gladden... kind words to say... gifts to be given... deeds to be done.

That's the essence of songcraft: making something everyone can understand yet it still sounds new.