Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.

I think what I am is a "convener"; I like to convene people around ideas.

Hope is when you look out the window and you go, 'It doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to go beyond what I see to give people visions of what could be.'

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way.

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

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