If I turned around every time somebody called me a faggot, I'd be walking backward - and I don't want to walk backward.

Hope will never be silent.

To sit on the front steps — whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city — and to talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color.

Hope is never silent.

Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.

All men are created equal. Now matter how hard they try, they can never erase those words. That is what America is about.

Freedom is too enormous to be slipped under a closet door.