Womenfolk raised me, and I was full-grown before I knew I came from a broken home.

America want nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can, even if it turns out to be only last week. Not to face now or the future, but to face backwards.

I think a whole lot of stuff gets by people – I could name half a dozen groups that do songs that are openly supportive of experimentation with drugs, nobody ever said anything to them.

You can have a poem like “B-Movie” and sum up thirty conversations that people have had on the subject, but I wrote it down, and other people didn’t.

I find it not just strange but almost ridiculous that people could take a song like the one I was doing and interpret it is corroding anything. Folks have the feeling that oftentimes if you don’t talk about something it will go away.

I’ve always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We’re not protesting from the outside. We’re inside.

Every once in a while, you live long enough to get the respect that people didn’t want to give while you were trying to become a senior citizen.

The truth is that in this country you here you’re more likely to be harassed, hurt, or killed if you’re a minister speaking about progress for Black people than if you are a sure enough revolutionary.

I don’t think people in power have the potential to do anything like that to me. I feel as though as long as our music is available, folks are going to hear it.

If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you’re supposed to help them. Why wouldn’t you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.