The Black Church Will Accept Anybody.

There Has To Be Some Mystery In Life, Because The Joy Of Being A Writer And The Joy Of Being A Musician Is The Joy Of Discovery. I Don't Want Someone Discovering For Me What I Should Be Discovering On My Own. If A Person Is Discovering For Me, Then They're Living For Me. It's My Responsibility, Indeed It's My Privilege, To Go Out And Discover The World For Myself.

I'm Trying To Educate People About Things That I Believe Are Right, And Some Of The Things That I Believe Are Right Might Not Be Right, So I Live In Constant Self-doubt. I Think That Creates A Kind Of Search That You Have To Have, And It Prevents You From Doing A Lot Of Stuff That You Would Normally Do.

I Felt Like A Tinker Toy Kid Building My Own Self Out Of One Of Those Toy Building Sets; For As She Laid Her Life Before Me, I Reassembled The Tableau Of Her Words Like A Picture Puzzle, And As I Did, So My Own Life Was Rebuilt.

First Person Narrative Is A Very Effective Tool But You Have To Know As A Writer How To Make It Work.

My Whole Family Was - We Grew Up In New York, But All My Relatives And All My Father And Stepfather's Family, They Were All From The South. So I Like That Old Black Voice, And I Love The Sort Of Old Black Man With A Corncob Pipe, Sitting There Telling A Whopper.