I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

Abortion, for many women, is more than an experience of suffering beyond anything most men will ever know, it is an act of mercy, and an act of self-defense.

I think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid in very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly.

My parents taught me service - not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

We have elders who [are] misguided and wallowing around in troughs of money with the wrong sort. They're not really good elders for the youth to emulate. The youth rightly don't like them.

It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand there and lie about who you actually are. That's the trap.

Helped are those too busy living to respond when they are wrongfully attacked: on their walks they shall find mysteries so intriguing as to distract them from every blow.