The world has improved mostly because unorthodox people did unorthodox things. Not surprisingly, they had the courage and daring to think they could make a difference.

Paradise is to be the ultimate instrument, fulfilling God's desperate intent that we love each other.

That we arrived at fifty years together is due as much to luck as to love, and a talent for knowing, when we stumble, where to fall, and how to get up again.

We both grew up in the atmosphere of struggle, both Ossie and me, ... I come out of Harlem and Harlem comes out of me - wailing police sirens and street parties, rumors and landlords, that cultural, spiritual scene. And Ossie came up from the South, where struggle and dying were part of everyday life. That is who we are.

Revolutionaries don't get job security. They compete with rats for cheese and with strays for shelter--after the big bullets make feet out of their knees.

Spike Lee made such a difference in terms of black filmmakers, the subtleties - those authors, those writers who write from love, and those who write from that lofty position of superiority.I felt he took aspects of the black experience in America and held it up for us to see. He tried to put it in perspective. He did put it in perspective in his unique way.

I don't want to have my children have to get dressed up to go out to say good morning and deserve to live among some other people. I want to be able to be free and take for granted that my neighbors like me and I like them.