"Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really..." - Quote by Langston Hughes

“Out of love, No regrets-- Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets-- Though the return Be never.”

“Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.”

“In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.”

“On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.”

“The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope.”

“We rappers are role models.”

“I don't think I'd ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.”

“I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy, ... of Pompey and Caesar, and of Augustus too.”

“Some people will tell you that slow is good - but I'm here to tell you that fast is better.”