I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.
Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.
Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the linePlease, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the lineI ain’t got no ticket please let me ride the blinds
You can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child.
Don’t you try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sure they doing right by you.
My early attempts writing plays, which are very poetic, did not use the language that I work in now. I didn’t recognize the poetry in everyday language of black America. I thought I had to change it to create art.
Sometimes you find bad luck and good luck in the same place.
Some people carry their luck with them and people got to find it.
Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling… It’s the attitude that’s in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.
Once I started to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I just let them start talking.
I write for myself, and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.
All art is political in the sense that it serves someone’s politics.
Like most people, I have this sort of love-hate relationship with Pittsburgh. This is my home, and at times I miss it and find it tremendously exciting, and other times I want to catch the first thing out that has wheels.