Words have consequences, and I judge people not only by their words but what they do. And if you look at people who have a pattern, who've built a career out of dividing people and who built a career out of often not just Obama but finding ways to degrade and diminish African-Americans and African-American leaders. It's racist to consistently make your living on the backs of black people.

A poet wants only one small stone on which to carve his life.

In the history of this country [USA], the reason we have never developed a social democratic base, the way they have in Europe - we're the only Western country without some kind of universal health care. There's a reason, and it is because corporate interests have divided the American people by race and ethnicity, the Irish from the blacks, the Germans from the German Jews.

I used to keep my college roommate from reading my personal mail by hiding it in her textbooks.

Do not be sad that you have suffered, be glad that you have lived.

Friendships begin because, even without words, we understand how someone feels.

The only educational aspect of television is that it puts the repair man's kids through college.