When my dad was badly weakened by the flu and my mom wanted to call an ambulance to take him to the emergency room, he wouldn't go unless he could shave first and change into a nice shirt and a pair of slacks.

From about eight years old I was always making things on the sewing machine. Friends would see me making dresses and costumes, and I'd use difficult fabrics such as Lycra and elastic. But you know, my dad was creative and my brother is inventive too.

My dad doesn't like to admit it, but he's the ultimate stage dad. He likes to see himself as my manager even though he's not. I tell him to calm down at least twice a week. The day of the Tony nominations, I honestly thought he was having a heart attack.

Our songs touch people, and take them back to a time when there was no threat of terrorism, when you didn't have to lock your doors and when Mom and Dad took care of everything.

The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.

Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.

Let me be a free man - free to travel, free to stop, free to work.

We gave up some of our country to the white men, thinking that then we could have peace. We were mistaken. The white man would not let us alone.

If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace.

Treat all men alike. Give them the same law. Give them an even chance to live and grow.

All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.

It does not require many words to speak the truth.

I hope that no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people.

I pressed my father's hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit land.

My father... had sharper eyes than the rest of our people.

If I'm the biggest artist in the world, cool, but I want to just be me.

I try to look cool. I strategize. Sometimes it's like - that's part of the strategizing, to make it seem like I don't think about it.

Don't ask for a million dollars. Ask for the stuff that'll get you a million dollars - your health, your brain, your sanity, wisdom. Prepare me for when I do get that million. Make sure I don't go crazy, make sure I help my family.

I want that longevity in the career, so if you don't know how to get it, you trying to chase that high, you trying to continue to chase your dreams and conquer things you never thought you could get. And you just want to get there too soon, so you taking the wrong moves to try and compensate what's not happening.

Jupiter, Pluto, pick a planet: we can go there. I just got a bit more work to do in the music industry, and we're going to space, baby.

I have to go places beyond music.

I have a crazy work ethic. I'll do 20 songs a day. I love music that much.

You got to make the most of your second life. I was born Nayvadius, but now I'm Future. Should I dwell on what Nayvadius was supposed to be? I get a chance to experience life as something else. I wasn't supposed to be like this.

For me, it's always been one of my pet peeves to keep people engaged and talking, and just always being interested in what I have going on. To keep the level of creativity always turned up to the max.

Man, I love being a dad. It's super fun.

Forgiveness is a big part of - especially post-civil rights movement - is a big part of African-American Christianity, and I wasn't raised within the Christian church; I wasn't raised within any church.

I constantly write about my safety walking to and from school, and then I would come home at night, and I would cut on the TV, and I would watch a show like 'The Wonder Years,' or I would watch, you know, some other show like 'Family Ties.'

We look at young black kids with a scowl on their face, walking a certain way down the block with their sweatpants dangling, however, with their hoodies on. And folks think that this is a show of power or a show of force. But I know, because I've been among those kids, it ultimately is fear.

The symbolic power of Barack Obama's presidency - that whiteness was no longer strong enough to prevent peons taking up residence in the castle - assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy and instilled fear in its adherents and beneficiaries.

Racism is a physical experience.

Every writer dreams of having the ability to hold forth for 8,000 words and pull all these different forms together: history, reportage, journalism. That was all I really wanted, and 'The Atlantic' was my first high-profile opportunity.

The essential relationship across American history between black people and white people is one of exploitation and one of plunder. This is not, you know, necessarily about, you know, whether you're a good person or not or whether you see black people, you know, on the street, and you're willing to shake their hands and be polite.

If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America.

Outside of hip-hop, it was in comics that I most often found the aesthetics and wisdom of my world reflected.

I was 24 when Samori was born. His mom was 23.

I didn't start off as a journalist; I started off as a poet. My ambition was to practise poetry. Then I found journalism, but that other voice never fled from me.

My belief is in the chaos of the world and that you have to find your peace within the chaos and that you still have to find some sort of mission.

The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the matter is, you know, people do respond to riots. The 1968 Housing Act was in large response to riots that broke out after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. They cited these as an actual inspiration.

When you read a comic book, there's a space between what's happening on the panel and what you have to literally see in your mind. That's not true of movies, where you see everything.

My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that was exactly what was happening all around us.

Superheroes are best imagined in comic books. The union between the written word, the image, and then what your imagination has to do to connect those allows for so much.

When I see Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, it's only a picture. My imagination has to do some of the work there, to impute feeling and everything. We're talking about something that's so surreal, it's just not possible within the world as we know it. So that requires a form that is not so literal.

Eddie Conway is central to my first memories. My parents used to take me to, when it was open, the Baltimore city penitentiary to see Eddie Conway - I was talking to my dad about this recently - from the time I might have been one or two years old. I mean, literally, my first memories are of black men in jail, specifically of Eddie Conway.

I'm not the first person to say this, but communication at 'SNL' - I don't want to say it's not good, but unless you ask questions, you will not know what's going on.

Things that I feel really sad about, I talk about. That way, if it's funny, it doesn't hurt anymore.

I don't let a lot of people know about my dad dying on 9/11. It's not a way to introduce yourself. So I never told anybody, and then I would do jokes about it... and I think people thought I was lying about it. Which would be crazy!

Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in the world; Islam is the second. It's spreading in Asia, Africa, and South America. So the world is in a kind of religious revival, and the atheists are totally flummoxed. They thought they were winning, and now they see that they aren't.

I'm not above the law. No one is. But we don't want to live in a society where Lady Justice has one eye open and winks at her friends and casts the evil eye at her adversaries. When will it stop?

Young men are obsessed with their dads, and they remain obsessed if the dad is not around. Remember that there was a lot of discussion about how George W. Bush might have invaded Iraq to atone for the failures of his dad.

I think people appreciate a songwriter who shows different sides. The whole angst thing is cool, but if that's all you've got, it's just boring. Everything I write, whether it's happy or sad, has a sense of humor to it.