Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges.
Old folks are the nation.
Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.
Revolution begins with the self, in the self.
My responsibility to myself, my neighbors, my family and the human family is to try to tell the truth.
When we ever invited the beast to dinner he didn’t come in and swipe the napkins and start taking notes on the tablecloth ’bout how to take over the whole house?
When you dream, you dialogue with aspects of yourself that normally are not with you in the daytime and you discover that you know a great deal more than you thought you did.
Our lives preserved. How it was; and how it be. Passing it along in the relay. That is what I work to do: to produce stories that save our lives.
The story is a piece of work. The novel is a way of life.
The dream is real, my friends. The failure to make it work is the unreality.
Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn’t keep up with what’s out there ain’t gonna be out there.
Not all speed is movement.
We have not been scuffling in this waste-howling wildness for the right to be stupid.
An artist represents an oppressed people and makes revolution irresistible.
People have to be given permission to write, and they have to be given space to breathe and stumble. They have to be given time to develop and to reveal what they can do.
And what is religion, you might ask. It’s a technology of living.
What is happening to the daughters of the yam? Seem like they just don’t know how to draw up the powers from the deep like before. Not full sunned and sweet anymore.
It’s a dismally lonely business, writing.
Medication without explanation is obscene.
The only proper mask to wear in life is your own damn face.
One monkey don’t stop no show. Not one, not six. The struggle continues.