The black church will accept anybody.

God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.

I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!

You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

First person narrative is a very effective tool but you have to know as a writer how to make it work.

If you have the material it will form itself as a kind of connective tissue.

People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.

I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn't count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman.

I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.

It is hard to find romance in the present because there's nothing left to the imagination.

The Best Deal Is The One Where Everyone Walks Away Happy!

I want to feel proud and happy about my selflessness. But what happens when being selfless takes away a big part of your self?

Unseasonable kindness gets no thanks.

It is the business of future to be dangerous.... The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

When people speak their own language you get a much better sense of who they are.

There are happy blues, sad blues, lonesome blues, red-hot blues, mad blues, and loving blues. Blues is a testimony to the fullness of life.

And all the trips you know you missed And all the lips you never kissed Cut through you like a knife. And now you see stretched out before thee Just another story of a life.

We may have pain, but not as great as His name.

How soft indeed the song of butterflies eating.

I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.