"Do you know how to read?" "No. It is one of the black arts." He nodded. "But a useful one," he said."

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I don't know why people always compare me [ with Amiri Baraka] I was never part of the Black Arts Repertory Theater or the Black Arts Movement; people who claim that I was are wrong. I was downtown. I was living in Chelsea when they were operating in Harlem.

— Ishmael Reed