When you live in the South, you're constantly part of the civil rights movement.

From now back to the past, we can observe clearly that none of us is free.

I started composing when I was around 13, and back then, people used to say that I needed to be a composer or a performer, but I can't be good at both of them. I could never understand why anyone would say that. Jellyroll did both, Bessie Smith did both, and so did I.

We have these old fashioned ideas. For instance, here in America, we talk about democracy - but we don't have a democracy. There are elements of a democracy.

If parents are the fixed stars in the child's universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.

Family's first, and that's what matters most. We realize that our love goes deeper than the tennis game.

If parents shield their children from real feelings, kids falsely imagine their parents are in constant control of themselves - and may try to emulate them.

I was raised in a very religious home with two parents who were deeply involved in the black church. When I was young, I went to a small black AME church in New Jersey.