I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.

I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.

Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.

I wasn't going to be one of those people who died wondering what if? I would keep putting my dreams to the test - even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.

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.

You're always being judged. No matter what you do, it's not the right thing. If you didn't become successful, then you'd be pointed at as one of those creatures down their who didn't take advantage of this or that, who didn't climb and rise and so forth.

I am really quite proud of most of the people I " know who have "made it," who do things to help people.