Stanley Crouch

“I don't know any women who don't think about what they look like, and I don't know any men who don't think about what women look like.”

“Your ethnic or sexual identity, what region of the country you're from, what your class is - those aspects of your identity are not the same as your aesthetic identity.”

“When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.”

“The discussion of ideas as opposed to the American narcissistic obsession with what's going on with the self, that's the general thing people are talking about.”

“Now the writing in the head, I definitely do every day, thinking about how I want to phrase something or how I'd like to rephrase something I've already written.”

“Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA.”

“Getting to the pint where the other is not the enemy is a big leap.”

“You can meet a young person who goes to school and is really enthusiastic, but if a sufficiently strong personality convinces them that this is a waste of time, that person might flunk out.”

“Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.”

“But the myth of violent solutions as the ultimate solutions maintains itself in much of popular media.”

“People don't really think other people are the same.”