The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.

The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.