We didn't sit around the dining table talking about Madam Walker, but the silverware that we used every day had her monogram on it and our china for special occasions had been Madam Walker's china... and the baby grand piano on which I learned to read music had been in A'Lelia Walker's apartment in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance.
I think artists are really the root of a tree. They can search for truth or reality in their own way, and the gallery can support them - the outside part of the tree, where it is more about reaching the outside world, connecting with the outside world. That is the role of the gallery, no? Why does the artist have to do that?
Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process.
A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.
An Englishman teaching an American about food is like the blind leading the one-eyed.
It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life.
I'm a bit of an insomniac. I go to bed at 5am because I get caught up in watching TV or listening to music at night.
Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.
Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.
One lesson that every nation can learn from China is to focus more on creating village-level enterprises, quality health services and educational facilities.
