It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.

I'm not really up on what's new. I'm still listening to Run DMC twenty-five years later. In the same way that the baby-boomers in America were forcing '60s music and Motown down our throats, now people of my generation are forcing Tears For Fears and old Hip Hop upon others.

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

For years I felt that I wasn't ready to take on slavery. It's a huge topic, and I didn't want to mess it up.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

Colored, Negro, Afro-American, African American. ... Every couple of years someone came up with something that got us an inch closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed.