I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.

Racism has been for everyone like a horrible, tragic car crash, and we've all been heavily sedated from it. If we don't come into consciousness of this tragedy, there's going to be a violent awakening we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?

Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.

I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.

Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.

I remember from my father's funeral that the minister kept using a metaphor about life of a prism. And I took that away like a cherished image.

I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators "the haute couture of language."