I believe - what did Faulkner say? "The past is not even past.".

Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and ….

I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we….

A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality….

That split is inside all Americans. There are contradictions inside all of us about color and race. We've learned to cover them up and live with them….

Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable..

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up..

When it's played the way is supposed to be played, basketball happens in the air; flying, floating, elevated above the floor, levitating the way oppr….

As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well..

You have to be a minor superhero just to get to be a dignified man, and that's kind of exacerbated for men of color..

That's one of the beauties, I think, of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed ….

I don't like the way question marks look. They're really ugly. They look like blots. At some other point in my life, I might have disliked them becau….

Everything is up for grabs, everything is relative. Except nothing is if you are serious about it because the moment you become serious about answeri….

I don't tell everything. I want the reader to have the feeling that maybe they know the whole truth, but they don't..

Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable. That's one of the beauties of African American life. There was this thing called sla….

Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream..

Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, th….

Remember that a book is many drafts - mine certainly are. It's improvisation. It's as much jazz and the way we talk and the way I heard people preach….

There's something human that has to do with time and space and being who I am that is in progress and always will be in progress. And who I am, on di….

That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is..

If Mumia Abu-Jamal has nothing important to say, why are so many powerful people trying to shut him up?.