Amiri Baraka

My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with... namely America... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all those great things. ”

You can't be an American without being related to other Americans. ”

I guess I was the most unbohemian of all bohemians. My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with - ... namely America... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all those great things. ”

Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is. ”

The poet is someone, I think, who's interested in registering experience immediately or giving you the sense of immediacy and directness. ”

America is as much a black country as a white one. The lives and destinies of the white American are bound up inextricably with those of the black American. ”

The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how I see it. Otherwise, I don't know why you do it. ”

You have to start with slavery because those abuses have never been eradicated. You know, people are not living in slums because they voted to. You know, their children are not in jail because they wanted them to. You know, these are the results of a people who have been oppressed and suffer national oppression, you know. ”

I'm fully conscious all the time that I'm an American Negro, because it's part of my life. But I also know that if I want to say, 'I see a bus full of people,' I don't have to say, 'I am a Negro seeing a bus full of people.' ”

My own thinking has evolved. You find Africanisms in American speech. You find an African influence on United States culture. There are all kinds of Africanisms in America, as you would expect, if you really thought about it... That whole thing is much broader; the influence is much broader than I first understood. ”