“For just once in my life, I’d like to get through a whole week without having to deal with some fool, white or black, who’s got an attitude about the way I look.”

[On speaking of family secrets:] I don’t know how you heal a wound and not let it get some air.

“Criminal justice” was a term she found more apt than it was meant to be.

I wanted to pay homage to working women because they are the bridge that got us over.’ My work is about the people who are assumed not to have a worldview.

No matter how old we get, life’s always got a lesson for you. Most likely one you’ve learned ten times before.

I’ve got a nice collection of paintings – a Basquiat, a black-and-white Warhol that’s like a Rorschach test, and I commissioned Takashi Murakami to do a ten-foot joint for me. It’s almost like the explosion in Hiroshima with his famous skeleton head. There’s a wall above my fireplace reserved for it.

[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.

Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in white and black the same.

The white man arrogated to himself the right to rule and to be obeyed by the non-white; his mission, he claimed, was to “civilize” Africa. Under this cloak, the Europeans robbed the continent of vast riches and inflicted unimaginable suffering on the African people.

I use charcoal a lot. Partly because it has such a fantastic range but also because it is very easy to erase.

For me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.

The Great Spirit made all things. He gave the white people a home beyond the great waters. He supplied these grounds with game, and gave them to his red children; and he gave them strength and courage to defend them.

Rebirth. I mean by this simply what happens when the child begins to realise the fact that the black does not enter through the white’s front door is not in the same category as the fact that the dead will never come back.