Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature.

And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.

This word "LOVE" - discredited, "clicheed" - can be restored and love, the instinct, the impulse to care for somebody in the hope that somebody will care for you - plus our language, the language, a language - is about all we have. With everything else going on, this is what makes us, what keeps us human.

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.

Sometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.