In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem. . . I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if I did not get out I would slowly strangle.
I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.
I love Harlem, it's like a second home to me.
Despite everything that Harlem did to our generation, I think it gave something to a few. It gave them a strength that couldn't be obtained anywhere else.
You can never tell what's in a woman's mind, And if she's from Harlem, there's no use o' tryin
The other day I went to a school in Harlem to talk to some 7th graders [12-year-olds] and I said, ‘If I have to give you some advice, the most important thing is: the sooner you become your own best friend, the better your life will be,’
My peers at the time: you know, young black kids from off the streets of Harlem, having these conversations with me in my small, dirty little studio up in Harlem.
That old Bobby Kennedy 1968 form of liberalism where you could be holding hands with the Appalachian family on one day and then be in Harlem the next day and nobody thinks it's weird, that is something that isn't as strong. It was strong in 2008. It hasn't been as strong since then. That's just a reality that we have to deal with that it's not just that the Republicans ran a terrible candidate who had bad ideas, it's also that the circle of love and affirmation that we have as progressives can sometimes just not be big enough.
In Harlem, I got all my black friends. But when I go downtown, I got black, white, Asian, Indian friends. There's no borders, no barriers.
I pass for a hypersensitive, reclusive neurotic, which I may well be, but I hope the year won't come when my anxieties and fatigue will destroy my love of this life, of all the things that inspire me--a line of music, a face in a Vermeer portrait, a character in an opera, or a model born in Harlem.
The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
As a Latino growing up in Spanish harlem, it's not easy trying not to be hot-headed.
We'll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites.
I don't know why people always compare me [ with Amiri Baraka] I was never part of the Black Arts Repertory Theater or the Black Arts Movement; people who claim that I was are wrong. I was downtown. I was living in Chelsea when they were operating in Harlem.
There are other tracks that are more reliant upon the beat. Like nobody's going to sit there and play "Harlem Shake" on the guitar!
Harlem is filled with moments of history.
As one who loves literature, art, music and history, I've been deeply rooted in the Harlem Renaissance for many years.
I'll step in an airport just now, and people will recognize me. I'm in Harlem on 144th and whatever, and people are coming up to me like, "What's up, Chamillionaire?" And seeing it grow is, nothing turning into something, that feeling is a really good feeling.
I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem.
I went through various stages in my childhood, as we all do, various stages of obsessions with people and things. And I did. I wanted to be the first white Harlem Globetrotter.
