"In order for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience."

“Black people have been killed for directing their gaze at the wrong person. I want my subjects to reclaim their right to look, to see, to be seen.”

Source : Dawoud Bey, Walker Art Center (1995). “Dawoud Bey: portraits 1975-1995”

“I'm not even really a joke-teller. I can do ad-lib and banter, but I don't do jokes.”

“Im better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.”

“You can all go to heck; I will go to Texas”

“We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.”

“Heaven, on occasion, half opens its arms to us; and that is the great moment.”

“The interesting point is that the polarization is not so much among the public, although there's some of that. The polarization on the immigration issue is really between the elites and the public. In other words, this is not so much a right-left issue, which it is partly.”

Source : "A Closer Look At Obama Administration's Controversial Deportation Plans". "All Things Considered" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. December 26, 2015.

“I'm not expecting the American literary community to welcome me with open arms. To them I'm just some schmuck kid who wrote some book.”