If I had seen a black woman play Juliet as a little girl, my idea of my place in the world would have been totally different.
I took a private lesson, but it didn't really work out, so I went back to playing along with records. That's really the thing that got me into playing a lot - getting excited about playing along with my favorite bands like Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.
If you take the '70s with Blaxploitation pictures, there was a proliferation of black-content films and motion pictures, television, stage plays and so forth at a time when Hollywood was in trouble financially, and it was cheaper to do black films to keep the lights on until they could reestablish themselves.
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.
When I was younger, I remember there was a really famous book, and it was called 'The People Could Fly.' And so this idea of, kind of like, black characters kind of jumping into space and kind of the challenge that they presented to gravity I thought was really interesting.
If O.J. had been accused of killing his black wife, you would not have seen the same passion stirred up.
I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.
Black Saturday reminded many Australians of what they know only too well: that of all the advanced economies, Australia is perhaps the one most vulnerable to climate change.
Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.
My entertainment was going to the local dollar movie theatre on the weekend, where I watched old black and white movies. If you wanted current movies, you had to drive to the big city.
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
We have a legacy to uphold: the people who died so that we could have the right to vote; the people who sacrificed so that we would one day realize the dream of a black president.
Aaliyah revolutionized what it was to be a young black woman in America. She made it OK to be a nerd and to be a tomboy. She made it OK to wear leather and chains. She was the first black girl with an ombre. She was so far ahead of everything and everyone. It was just who she was. She was an innovator, but she didn't even realize it.
I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too intimate contacts with my own furniture.
When I went to school, there were no Black philosophers, at least none that I was aware of, who were recognized by Western universities.
I resent that I have to prove that I'm black.
I've always been interested in masking, layering, dressing up and beautifying yourself and what that meant to black women. I've always wanted to make things that I haven't seen before.
It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.
White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
I felt Helen Willis was in tune with the situation of a black woman married to a white man, and she had no problem being black.
I can't eat beans - all beans. I think because I'm half Cuban. So growing up, we were always eating black beans and rice, and I think I just said, 'Enough with it,' and I can't even stand to taste it anymore.
I'm an Englishman who did a film on Mogadishu, 'Black Hawk Down.'
Personally, I'm very classic. If I'm going to wear a suit, it's going to be classic, black, and fit very well. There's nothing like it.
Eyes is the attempt to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and to create an emotional, intellectual constituency. But what do you do after that? The black community doesn't have institutions that pick up such moments and preserve them.
People hear the soul, black influence in my voice. I grew up listening to CKLW and all the black stations like WLBS.
When I arrived to study at Oxford in October 1963, the bohemian style was black plastic or leather jackets for women and black leather or navy donkey jackets for men. I stuck to cavalry twills and a duffle coat, at least for a few months.
Bald is the new black!
I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes.
Sorrows are like thunderclouds, in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.
When I look into the crowd, I see young and old, black and white - it's amazing that I'm able to connect with so many different kinds of people.
Sometimes I worked with just a background of a rock or a tree or black velvet, and just had to imagine the whole thing.
Remember that my view, the only true view I can see with, is through the black eyes that I have.
I always was a weird child. My mother told me the story that, in kindergarten, I would come home and tell her about this weird kid in my class who drew only with black crayons and didn't speak to other kids. I talked about it so much that my mother brought it up with the teacher, who said, 'What? That's your son.'
Well who's black and what is a black person?
My birthmark essentially looks like I have a black eye. It isn't that bad, so you can imagine if it has been this big a part of my life, think of what it must be like for children with more serious birthmarks that cover half their face.
