“All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.”

You write in order to change the world, if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also so much more than that. So are we all.

Youth must be the worst time in anybody’s life.

It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.

I’d rather go on hearing your lies, than to go on living without you.

The sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

Free speech is my right to say what you don’t want to hear.

Not being heard is no reason for silence.

What you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority.

Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.