A Quote by Muhammad Ali

I would like to say that whites jumped right behind Malcolm X. They’re makin’ a book about him, it’s required readin’ in all colleges now, and they’re makin’ a movie about him, and projectin’ him as the leader and if you read his book and see the movie that’s comin’ out, it’ll make you hate Elijah Mohammed and the Muslims. Mainly, this is done to turn the black people against the real leader and I’d like to say that this is the way white people rule.
Whites have always put one against another and now they have a dead man who was nothin' but a, he admitted it himself, Malcolm X, was a tramp or had white women sellin' their body for him, he was nothin' until the Honorable Elijah Mohammed made him great, made him great, taught him, even his name X come from Elijah.
Everything I got comes from Elijah Mohammed. He taught me who I was, he made me proud, he made me fearless, he made me love my own, I’ve turned down millions to keep from selling out my people, the beautiful name Mohammed Ali. And white people cannot destroy me like they have other big ministers of his in the past by telling us oh, you speak good, you should be the leader.White people make me thinkin' that I'm smart, and as soon as I leave Elijah you can get me. But as long as I stay with the Honorable Elijah Mohammed I'm safe.
I'd like to say that Muslims are never in violence with white people. It's the black man who love you. See, you don't let him in your toilet, you don't let him in your restroom, you don't let him marry your daughter, you gotta fight. So, we're not gonna be botherin' you, you understand. Muslims don't come in, we don't have no trouble with you. It's just the integrator.
I'd say the purest experience for the movie is not to have read the book because I think when you've read the book you're just ticking off boxes. I think that after you see the movie, reading the book is a cool thing. I always say the movie's not meant to replace the book. That's ridiculous. I'm a huge fan of the book.
I'll say nothing against him. At one time the whites in the United States called him a racialist, and extremist, and a Communist. Then the Black Muslims came along and the whites thanked the Lord for Martin Luther King.
Makin' records is one art form and playin' live is another. It's like the difference between makin' a movie and doin' theatre.
If you want to write about a person who isn't nice, people say, "This is a bad book. It's about somebody I couldn't stand." But that's not the point. You don't have to like a character to like a book. Most of the time, people would misjudge and say, "I didn't like the book." No, you didn't like the character. That doesn't make it any less interesting of a book. In fact, to me, it makes it more interesting.
You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.
I would like to see us find Osama Bin Laden, but let's say we did capture him. Let's say we did kill him. How much good would that do? There's still thousands of people behind him. It's this huge thing.
A lot of racism going on in the world right now. Who's more racist? Black people or white people? Black people. You know why? 'Cuz we hate black people too! Everything white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.
When I am dead--I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form--I want you to just watch and see if I'm not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with "hate". He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of "hatred"--and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race.
When I read Matt Ruff's book, that was my first encounter with learning about sundown towns, and I was like 'What?' Like, you can't make this up. If I wrote this horror movie talking about sundown towns where you can't be black after dark in America, people be like, 'OK, we get the metaphor,' and it's like, no, that's real. It's not a metaphor.
I was a big reader as a child. My father is a great book lover and a librarian, but he forbid me to read bad literature. I was not allowed to read Nancy Drew or books like that. I often say to him that me becoming a crime author is both a way of pleasing him and annoying him.
Parker wasn't supposed to be a series. He was supposed to be one book, and if he was only going to be in one book, I didn't worry about it. And then an editor at Pocket Books said "Write more books about him." So I didn't go back at that point and give him a first name. If I'd known he would've been a series, I would've done two things differently. First, I would've given him a first name because that means for 27 books, I've had to find some other way to say, "Parker parked the car."
We followed the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, who is the boss. And we don't waste a lot of time arguin' about a dead black man, Malcolm X, when the whites are our common enemies.
Many people are quick to say that we are not recognized by Muslims in the East . And I start with the Honorable Elijah Mohammed. In 1959, he went throughout the Holy City of Mecca to dine and wine with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and all of the black, mainly the rulers of the Islamic countries.
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