I always wanted to be someone better the next day than I was the day before.

But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity.

My mother was the most amazing person. She taught me to be kind to other women. She believed in family. She was with my father from the first day they met. All that I am, she taught me.

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 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.

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.

I'm going to quit writing.