I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement.

When the long, varnished buds of beech Point out beyond their reach, And tanned by summer suns Leaves of bright bryony turn bronze, And gossamer floats bright and wet From trees that are their own sunset, Spring, summer, autumn I come here, And what is there to fear? And yet I never lose the feeling That someone else behind is stealing Or else in front has disappeared; Though nothing I have seen or heard, Makes me still walk beneath these boughs With cautious step as in a haunted house.

I'm against voter fraud in any form, and I have long supported a national voter ID card. But ID cards need not - and must not - restrict voting rights in any way, shape or form.

I had to get a second passport in a hurry.

Once the Xerox copier was invented, private diplomacy died. There's no such thing as secrecy. It's just a question of whether it's leaked or revealed openly.

For most of the world, civil and political rights... come as luxuries that are far away in the future.

The unsung heroes of the civil rights movement were always the wives and the mothers.