“Sometimes I feel like I’m not solid. I’m hollow. There’s nothing behind my eyes. I’m a negative of a person. All I want is blackness, blackness and silence.”

I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

Hour by hour, day by day, life becomes possible.

There is a certain unique and strange delight about walking down an empty street alone.

I love life. But it is hard and I have so much, so very much to learn.

The truth comes to me. The truth loves me.

She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.

It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

If the body is a temple, then tattoos are its stained glass windows.

The constant struggle in mature life, I think, is to accept the necessity of tragedy and conflict, and not to try to escape to some falsely simple solution which does not include these more somber complexities.

I am too pure for you or anyone.

One thing, I try to be honest. And what is revealed is often rather hideously unflattering.

I feel terribly vulnerable and ‘not-myself’ when I’m not writing.

The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.

I am not cruel, only truthful.

I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still.

Victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed.

I told my wife she looks sexy with black fingernails. Now she thinks I slammed the car door on her hand on purpose.

Black culture is cool, but black issues sure aren’t, huh?

You cannot act a color. Do not tell me I’m acting black, because I’m not. I’m acting whatever you want to call it – urban. I don’t even have a name for it. I just call it ‘me.’

A lot of people are wanting him [Barack Obama] to be the president just because he’s black. But I think he does have some good views.

All I’ve ever tried to tell anyone is that I’m not a black man or a white man or anything else. All I’ve ever been was an American.

Black women are the strongest most hardworking people on earth.

The silver and black may have another home, but the Raiders will always belong to the people of Los Angeles.