To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed.

The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.

To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.