My mother's always looking for answers. She's always searching for new information. I think she has a thirst for hunger that very few possess innately.

So what you do [under apartheid system] is you convince black people that the reason they are being oppressed is because there are some within their community who just can't behave. And if only they could behave, then everyone else would have more freedoms and liberties, which, of course, is not true.

Smaller incidents in my life made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.

I lived in a world where I didn't share the love for my stepfather that my mother shared for him. She married him.

I think it was something I inherited from my mother, who learned to do it. You know, I, like a baby duckling, was merely mimicking the survival traits that my mother possessed. And I came to learn very quickly that language was a powerful, powerful tool.

I'm coming from a place where I have seen a different way to handle it, or a slightly different way to go through what is happening, that gives me some perspective. So I think it always helps. It always helps to have someone who has traveled the world or seen a different way to do something. That helps give you perspective.

[I had Bar mitzvah ]it was just me and my mom. And she's celebrating. And she's reading things to me in Hebrew. I don't know what's going on. And she's telling me that now I'm a man. And I'm like, does that mean I have no chores? And she's like, no, you still have chores, but you're a man. I didn't understand most of it.