…Quilting was a method of artistic expression that could also be used to cover people, to keep them warm, but which also put designs together to make… - Faith Ringgold

[I realized] I can’t tell your story, I can only tell mine. I can’t be you, I can only be me.

I was encouraged to look around me and to paint what I saw. I painted my story, and it had a lot of angles to it. I was trying to explain how I saw life as a black person living in America, and I put things together that were not acceptable. A lot of people did not want these kind of paintings representing America in any sense, but I wanted to tell my story and what I saw…

Political people don’t seem to understand art…It’s not what they’re trying to do. And if it is, let them do that. Don’t tell me what to do, because I have to look at this many years from now and be happy that I did it, not unhappy. And I would be unhappy with the ‘Kill whitey.’ It’s not my thing.