When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists - nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven.

I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.

This is one of the glories of man, the inventiveness of the human mind and the human spirit: whenever life doesn't seem to give an answer, we create one.

Sometimes, I can see the future stretched out in front of me - just as plain as day. The future hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me.

I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.

Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.

...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source].