If we lived in a democratic state our language would have to hurtle, fly, curse, and sing, in all the common American names, all the undeniable and representative and participating voices of everybody here.

I am a stranger, learning to love the strangers around me

Consequently, most of us really exist at the mercy of other people's formulations of what's important.

Like running trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying.

That a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.

As I think about anyone or anything -- whether history or literature or my father or political organizations or a poem or a film -- as I seek to evaluate the potentiality, the life-supportive commitment and possibilities of anyone or any thing, the decisive question is always where is the love?

But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.