I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
I love Tennessee, but they don't have the pine trees and the sandy soil and the black water that I grew up around.
In the States a lot of Hispanic and black audiences are gravitating towards 'Peaky Blinders.' A mate of went into a bar in Santa Monica and sent me a photo of four blokes dressed as Peakies - they meet every week for a 'Peaky Blinders' evening.
All black women aren't sassy, loud, difficult, or subservient. We are, in fact, very complex and very diverse, living very complex and diverse lives. That point cannot be made enough.
It's people who look like me, just seeing representation of everyone. I didn't get that when I was young. I only saw one black girl that was on a Disney show, that was known for being the sassy, coocoo, that type of girl.
I am an archetype. There's the fat, sassy, black friend, you know? That's an archetype that exists, but that's not truly me.
The sassy black woman who can land a good joke was sort of my go-to audition. Or playing a struggling mother.
The Jam went through a phase of wearing satin jackets. But that was pre-getting signed and making it, when we were still playing the pubs and clubs - around '75. Shocking, really - what would you call them apart from 'horrible?' We'd wear these white zip-up bomber jackets with black kind of loon pants and black and white shoes.
Ultimately, when I deliver something, a lot of times it will be from a black woman's perspective, but other times it will be just from a satirical, goofy perspective.
I was Catholic. You talk about a minority within a minority within a minority: a black Catholic in Savannah, GA.
Homosexuality in hip-hop is an extension of homosexuality in the black community. The black community is very, very conservative when it comes to homosexuality, and I don't mean conservative in the good way, like we're saving money. I mean very intolerant.
I love that as a black person I've experienced not being a minority. I think that's helped me to combat the minority mentality people can have here, which can stop them scaling the heights.
I read 'Scarlett' recently, and that was a killer comic book. The 'Black Widow' was pretty rockin'. There is a big list of killer chicks that are just rockin'.
Stalin had 15 scenic seaside villas, some of them czarist palaces, on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia. In 2002, I visited and photographed these extraordinarily well-preserved Stalinist time capsules.
Christmas sits like a black hole on the calendar. Just try scheduling a meeting at work the month of December.
I always tried to raise money for the Black Panthers through business schemes.
For her fifth wedding, the bride wore black and carried a scotch and soda.
I was an original Elvis fan. He was the voice of my generation. I was listening to him on the radio when he released his great Sun records with Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on bass.
We're not willing to give black leaders second chances because, in most cases, we're not willing to give them first chances.
In this country, we force millions of people - who are largely black and brown - into a permanent second-class status simply because they once committed a crime.
