I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Success is loving life and daring to live it.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham - both are certain they are the real American.

It is very dangerous to make a person larger than life because, then, young men and women are tempted to believe, well, if he was that great, he's inaccessible, and I can never try to be that or emulate that or achieve that.

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'