Within the black community, roughly 60 percent of children are born to single moms. Moms don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with their children. Their English is atrocious. Their speaking is atrocious. The dropout rate is horrendous.

What did I do? I walked into a drugstore to look for some mints, and then I walked out. What was wrong with that? I didn't kill Mr. Nesbitt.

he was trying to convince himself that he wasn't guilty.

I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

Each time I think there is no place lower to go, I find that there is at least one place that will mess you up worse than you were.

The movie is more real in so many ways than the life I am leading. No, that’s not true. I just desperately wish this was only a movie.

The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.