To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed.

I am not a hugely religious person, but I believe that there is a oneness with everything. And because there is this oneness, it is possible that my mother is the principal reason for my life.

I defend myself by improving myself.

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.

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.

I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself - not me, but black people - that were uncomfortable.

I sometimes like the pictures photographers take of me.