My daddy's face is a study. Winter moves into it and presides there. His eyes become a cliff of snow threatening to avalanche, his eyebrows bend like black limbs of leafless trees. His skin takes on the pale cheerless yellow of winter sun; for a jaw he has the edges of a snowbound field dotted with stubble; his high forehead is the frozen sweep of the Erie.

[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.

Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my remory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think if, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.

No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.

A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.

If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more.

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.