We're all African-American, so we're all influenced by each other.
Things are only boring if you are boring.
Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in. . . The edit.
Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.
A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.
I'm an anarchist. I'm implacably opposed to heirarchical systems of power and control. I also mistrust crowds, as they often operate according to their lowest common denominator. In terms of evolutionary psychology, the crowd is very close to a herd of stampeding wildebeest.
Whenever I produce my best work, it's always because I've spent time being idle. Something always emerges after nothing.
Withough danger you cannot go beyond danger.
In America, we don't, in daily discourse, use the words 'capitalism' or 'socialism. ' They've been kind of nonexistent words, I would say, amongst the general public.
I think emotional and mental pain is probably worse than physical pain. I think we don't realize that I have no arms or legs but we all have disabilities of some sort, some fear, some lost, some wishes that didn't come true, things we wish would be better.
Students generally have very little idea of the world they are entering into, and their teachers - like parents - are viewed as beings who alternately guide and admonish; rarely are those teachers viewed as individuals or is their professional standing considered. It is usually only afterward, when young people encounter real-life situations in their chosen professions that they sometimes learn (if they are lucky) that they studied with one of the greats.