Leroi Quotes & Sayings

[Make a sitcom] was really the idea of Executive Producer Joe Roth who owned the property over at Revolution Studios and said he was thinking about taking it to TV. And after he said that he already had [writer/director] Ali Leroi on board, and that he was going after Terry Crews, to me it was a no-brainer. I said, "Let's put this together!" — Ice Cube

All I can say is you don't know what's going to be on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. So I take no joy in what happens to another sport, whether it's about a perfect game or an issue of conduct. — David Stern

I've been interested in LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka's work for quite a while. My first introduction to LeRoi Jones was when my mother used to read me the 'Dead Lecturer' poems when I was a kid. — Rashid Johnson

You don't get to vote on what is. Have you noticed? — Byron Katie

I hated tobacco. I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death ... I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice, and is productive of good. There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea, and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my part, I consider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper. — Thomas Huxley

I've never given much thought to grants but now that LeRoi Jones has a Guggenheim I have to consider the possibility of a new era, for good or ill. So if you're sitting down there on a bundle of loose cash I'd appreciate any and all advice as to how I might lay my hands on some of it.
- in a letter to Richard Scowcroft dated 5/13/1965 — Hunter S. Thompson

We are all mutants. But some of us are more mutant than others. — Armand Marie Leroi

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands — LeRoi Jones

If it were easy there would be no opportunity. — Greg T Meyers

Black music has always known, and not been afraid to acknowledge just how high the stakes of Black thought are. To summarize the final soliloquy of Clay, the protagonist in LeRoi Jones' (aka Amiri Baraka's) play Dutchman. You'd better be glad Charlie Parker could play him some horn and Bessie Smith could sing, because if they didn't make music they might murder you. One would be hard pressed to find another group of people on this planet whose music is a surrogate for murder. One would be hard pressed to another group of people on this planet whose life is a proxy for death. — Frank B. Wilderson III

I worry that we don't currently have a democracy in the United States. Instead we have what [political philosopher] Sheldon Wolin has recently labeled a sort of inverted totalitarianism. — Thomas L. Dumm

There were two and only two messages that could have been comprehended by what he said.
But neither of them was soothing; neither of them was a lie. — Sanhita Baruah

Art is whatever makes you proud to be human. — LeRoi Jones