Carrie Mae Weems

It's impossible to change the social without changing the personal - you have to put your money where your mouth is. And if you're not making those challenges at home, it's unlikely you'll make them in a larger setting.

I got my first camera when I was 21 - my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday - but at that point politics was my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium.

I come from a family of Mississippi sharecroppers just a few generations away from slavery, and I experienced a lot of racism growing up - you can't avoid that if you're a person of color in this country.

I'm all in favor of looking deeply into as much as we possibly can. I'm not afraid of knowledge... With all new technology, weapons inevitably emerge... Evil comes out of the human heart. It doesn't come out of nature.