Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.

But then, as far as I know, as far as I've studied or heard or picked up, it seems that this type of thing is a curse against mankind.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.

It's an hour during the week where you can just slow down.

That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.

I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

I know that statistically, it has been proven that there is a tremendous amount of black on black crime within the inner cities.