I lived in a country where I couldn't live where I wanted to live. I lived in a country where I couldn't go where I wanted to eat. I lived in a country where I couldn't get a job, except for those put aside for people of my colour or caste.

We suffer pain, we hang tight to hope, we nurture expectations, we are plagued occasionally by fears, we are haunted by defeats and unrealized hopes . . . The hoplessness of which I speak is not limited.

Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's.

I want my great-granddaughter to have a fairly good understanding of the world in which I lived for 81 years and also the world before I came into it - all the way back a hundred thousand years, to the beginning of our species.

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida. It was so blatant... I had never been so described as Florida described me.

We're all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.

There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere.