I don't think you can bury words. I think the more you try to dismiss them, the more power you give to them, the more circulation they have.

I think we have to face right in the center of the hurricane, if you will, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s foibles and faults. I think that we do no good to ourselves and do no honor to him by pretending that he did not fail, that he did not wrestle greatly and, at times, surrender to his own sins and his own faults and failures.

There is no conscious choice of heterosexual identity any more than there is a homosexual one. The last person in the world who wants to be homosexual, for the most part, are homosexuals.

Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.

The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests.

I don't think you can bury words. I think the more you try to dismiss them, the more power you give to them, the more circulation they have.

Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.