"At our best. Now, I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else. [laughs] But oh, Lord, we got some great ones."

"I am a bluesman in the academy, a jazzman in the church, a funkster in the ivory tower."

"I have nothing against rich brothers and sisters. Pray for 'em every day. But callousness and indifference, greed and avarice is something that's shot through all of us."

"I'm a bluesman in the life of the mind, a jazzman in the world of ideas."

"To be radical is to grasp things by the root."