The language of faith is crucial because it affords human beings the privilege of intimacy with the ultimate.

[ Mrs. James, my fifth-grade teacher] introduced us to these authors early on and taught us that their literature is important. Langston Hughes - we read his poetry. We studied who W.E.B DuBois was. And so she whetted our appetites.

The heartbeat of your originality is deep within a body of thought that continually wrestles with the contradictions and limitations that we're constantly trying to overcome, the curiosities and the ignorances of the people we seek to help.

A lot of the commercial expression of hip-hop leaves a lot to be desired - but then, there's a lot of whack gospel music, but I'm not leading a crusade against it. Of course, the vices of hip-hop are far more influential, I understand. But the good that hip-hop transmits, the power of the culture to rally the best of our protest, and uplift, and resistance, traditions, is often unfairly overlooked.

He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all, he was more than the sum of his artistic parts.

There are things that you can do on an individual level, even as you continue to fight oppression systemically, that make things a little bit better for an identifiable group.

I hope [white brothers and sisters] read this book [Tears we cannot stop] and engage with it, but other white people have a better chance of speaking more directly to the white folk they know, because they're less likely to be subject to ridicule. They're insiders, so to speak.