Poverty makes it very difficult in an already competitive world for kids to get on a straight track where they can actually love learning.

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

You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.

I was a mimic when I was a child. I mimicked the teacher and made friends that way, actually. That was a very subversive activity, because I was a goody-goody who never got in trouble. But if I went off in the corner and mimicked the teacher, people loved it.

Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work.

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.

I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.