Not unlike our country's history, my personal history was founded upon an unfortunate history of racial conflict between black and white.

I feel like we haven't dealt with the ghosts of America's past, and the way to deal with it is to confront it, so every time people see me, I want them to be reminded and to confront that ghost.

I think it's the job of the artist to reflect the times and also reflect his or her views of the world.

A classic man is a distinguished man. He cares about taste and his craft. He's all about the simple model that I live by - eat, drink, be swanky, and have fun getting the job done. He makes sure that he's excellent in all things and that he cares about his neighborhood immensely.

I always believed that my work should be unfinished in the sense that I encourage people to add their creativity to it, either conceptually or physically. Back in the 1960s, I was calling for 'Unfinished Music,' number one, and number two, with my artwork - I was taking unfinished work into the gallery. And that's how I was looking at it.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

I think of myself more as a filmmaker or as a film person than as strictly just a writer. I don't come out of playwriting or anything like that.

History releases me from my own experience and jogs my fictional imagination.