There is no time to leave important words unsaid.
We learn about one another's culture the same way we learn about sex: in the streets.
A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality.
Phillip Roth uses his Black women characters to make anti intellectual remarks about Black history month, begun by a man who reached intellectual heights that Roth will never attain. Roth is a petty bigot and his ignorant remarks about black culture expose him as a buffoon to scholars the world over.
I guess when it comes to this privileged White racist feminist movement they respect someone who treats them rough: John Wayne. Frank Sinatra. Phillip Roth.
Two of the great leaders of the past - Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass - had White fathers - who deserted them. Now Margo Jefferson, who is hard on me and the fellas, wrote in the Times that she has nocturnal, erotic fantasies about John Wayne. What's up with these feminists? Do you see these double standards these feminists have? They dream about John Wayne, but they're hard on us [Black men].
There would be no Rock and Roll without Ike Turner, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, etc. Fake ghetto books and fake ghetto music. Elvis Presley, whom they idol, is merely a karaoke makeover of James Brown and Chuck Berry.
I get asked that a lot and I always go back to my mom's, 'No one has the right to beat you. ' I take that to every venue that I'm in. She would say, 'Someone has to be the best in the world, why not you?' I always try to keep that in mind.
Personally I would like to see that the nuclear age, in terms of power, does come, because there's no long-term future for developing countries without nuclear power.
Lilian Ross was a - veteran writer for The New Yorker. She, in fact, brought me to The New Yorker many years ago.
A lot of horrible, unfair, untrue things have been said about me. I can only say that the best revenge is success.