I don't very often read novels.

Forgiveness works two ways, in most instances. People have to forgive themselves too. The powerful have to forgive themselves for their behavior. That should be a sacred process.

In America, it is difficult to be your own man.

I was fortunate enough to have been raised to a certain point before I got into the race thing. I had other views of what a human is, so I was never able to see racism as the big question. Racism was horrendous, but there were other aspects to life.

We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists... in the loved one, perfection.

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.

If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you're not going to get very far. You simply won't.