"And I believe that beautiful has cracks and holes in it. The Earth has cracks and holes and is beautiful and perfect."--Abbey Lincoln #abbeylincoln
"Life is not a straight line; it's a jazz improvisation. You adjust, you bend, you find the rhythm, and you keep going."--Nina Simone #ninasimone
"If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be."--Maya Angelou #mayaangelou
"Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don't pass it up. Use it."--Lorraine Hansberry #lorrainehansberry
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."--Maya Angelou #mayaangelou
"Age is getting to know all the ways the world turns, so that if you cannot turn the world the way you want, you can at least get out of the way so you won't get run over."--Miriam Makeba #miriammakeba #sundaystudy
"Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking—but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it."--Lorraine Hansberry
"What is really beautiful? Understanding. The ability to reason. Humility is beautiful. Beauty is a person who is not disillusioned and hurt, who is unafraid, who still believes."--Abbey Lincoln #abbeylincoln
"Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently."--Maya Angelou #mayaangelou
"My music searches for an understanding. A kind of understanding. A frequency."--Abbey Lincoln #AbbeyLincoln
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."--Maya Angelou #MayaAngelou
"That's what I learned about performing—that it was real, and I had the ability to make people feel on a deep level... when you've caught it, when you've got the audience hooked, you always know because it's like electricity hanging in the air."--Nina Simone #NinaSimone #sundaystudy
"You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back."--James Baldwin #JamesBaldwin
"I always wanted to leave home. I never knew they were going to stop me from coming back. Maybe, if I knew, I never would have left. It is kind of painful to be away from everything that you've ever known. Nobody will know the pain of exile until you are in exile."--Miriam Makeba #miriammakeba
Performance is a political act. Malcolm and Maya. Abbey and Max.
Please join me for a conversation about Freedom's Gate, which will be published in Oct. I can't wait to share the book with you. Link in comments
Art D’Lugoff wanted a room where the walls didn't care what color you were, only what you had to say.
"Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely."--Lorraine Hansberry
Remembering the 1970s cool of Miriam Makeba and Stokely Carmichael.
The archive led to my new book, Freedom's Gate. Set at the iconic Village Gate nightclub. Maya Angelou recalled the Gate as a place of "fervent energy." She said, "We were young, we were Black, and we had everything to say."
#SundayStudy “Writing is, after all, an act of language, its practice. But first of all it is an effort of the will to discover.”—Toni Morrison
