I could have been, and may one day well be a high school English teacher, because I've been given so much I just feel like I have to give something back. The fact that some people consider my work to be good or strong, it's nice, but I know in my heart that if it's not coming - oftentimes it's probably not coming from the best place.

I felt like a Tinker toy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt.

I wish all critics, no matter their color, were more sophisticated when it comes to the moral questions a film like 'St. Anna' is trying to raise.

So sweet and precious is family life.

There has to be some mystery in life, because the joy of being a writer and the joy of being a musician is the joy of discovery. I don't want someone discovering for me what I should be discovering on my own. If a person is discovering for me, then they're living for me. It's my responsibility, indeed it's my privilege, to go out and discover the world for myself.

My black friends never asked me how much money I made, or what school my children went to, or anything like that. They just said, "Come as you are."

But what difference does it make? ... When you're mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.