As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.

Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.

You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.

Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.

The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest.

Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.

Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

From her character in the HBO miniseries: "The art of politics is the art of applying the seat of the britches to the seat of the chair.

The single most impressive fact about the attempt by American women to obtain the right to vote is how long it took.

I came to love Fenway. It was a place that rejuvenated me after a road trip; the fans right on top of you, the nutty angles. And the Wall. That was my baby, the left-field wall, the Green Monster.

Now I wonder all the time how you go back after something like that. Whether we can ever be friends again, or if what we had is broken into pieces. Not because of her, but because of me.

I don't like to go out in general.

Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented.

As artists we are here to make you uncomfortable with the complexity of your reality.

Conformity—the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.

Oh, but Paris isn’t for changing planes, it’s… it’s for changing your outlook, for… for throwing open the windows and letting in… letting in la vie en rose.

Winny would spend all of his time practicing limbo. He got pretty good. He could go under a rug.