I was born two months early, and everyone had given up on me. But my mother insisted on my life.

If I'm remembered for having done a few good things and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that's plenty.

Far as I can tell, I still have most of my hair, my gut is not hanging over my belt, and I still have all of my teeth.

I do know that I'm responsible not for what happens, but for what I make of it.

I defend myself by improving myself.

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

I didn't run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place.