If it's wrong for 13-year-old inner-city girls to have babies without the benefit of marriage, it's wrong for rich celebrities, and we ought to stop putting them on the cover of People magazine.

I hadn't planned on going to law school. I wanted to study 19th-century Russian literature.

The outside world told black kids when I was growing up that we weren't worth anything. But our parents said it wasn't so, and our churches and our schoolteachers said it wasn't so. They believed in us, and we, therefore, believed in ourselves.

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back - but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to.

You'd better stay determined, because that's how our ancestors got us where we are.

There comes a time when you roll up your sleeves and put yourself at the top of your commitment list.