None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)

I was deeply influenced by the sartorial practices of both preachers and jazz musicians and actually Masha in Act One of Anton Chekhov, my favorite writer's master piece,Three Sisters,when she arrives reflecting on whether they're ever going to get to Moscow, memories of the death of their father, and she's in black, and she says I'm in mourning for the world, saying in part that I have a sad soul and a cheerful disposition.

We are intent on building a movement. The next step is grassroots town meetings. We must keep alive the dialogue around the covenants.

Patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.

confining life to an eternal present is an insidious form of soul murder

I'm not a pacifist at all; I think there is a notion of "just war" that can be persuasively argued. I think in the face of Nazis, in the face of apartheid, that I would have joined those armies. But that's the last, last resort.

For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.