From the moment of birth, at every level, human beings who are more alike than different become polarized into two absolutely exclusive classes with very different and ill-distributed symbolic powers.

Do others, I wondered, "see things as I do? I do not think so, for if they did they would not still be alive." And, life-threatening though my vision seemed, I would not repudiate it: "Sometimes I think I shall die from being different even as I cling to the difference fiercely."

From the moment of birth, at every level, human beings who are more alike than different become polarized into two absolutely exclusive classes with very different and ill-distributed symbolic powers.

The charity that begins at home cannot rest there but draws one inexorably over the threshold and off the porch and down the street and so out and out and out and out into the world which becomes the home wherein charity begins until it becomes possible, in theory at least, to love the whole of creation with the same patience, affection, and amusement one first practiced, in between the pouts and tantrums, with parents, siblings, spouse, and children.

people who seem most hostile to my presence are those most fearful of my fate. And since their fear keeps them emotionally distant from me, they are the ones least likely to learn that my life isn't half so dismal as they assume.

One of the blessings that comes with parental territory is that children tug you into experiences you're pretty sure you'd never otherwise contemplate.

Out of the new arrivals in our lives--the odd word stumbled upon in a difficult text, the handsome black stranger who bursts in one night through the cat door, the telephone call out of a friend's silence of years, the sudden greeting from the girl-child---we constantly make of ourselves our selves.