The isolation, the separateness, is always a part of any utopia.

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.

A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment

You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.

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.

Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission.

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