Being asked, "Where are you REALLY from?" It makes one feel OTHERED.

You don't feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.

What made something precious? Losing it and finding it.

When you mention to people growing up in Cleveland they bring up the river catching on fire, or LeBron James leaving, they have these references, but no one imagines ending up there.

I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read what I wrote, fix things.

If you told people you were moving to Ohio, they wouldn't congratulate you. They'd say "OH WHY would you move there?" as if that was something that happened to you and you had to deal with.

They never discussed it, but both came to understand it as a promise: he would always make sure there was a place for her. She would always be able to say, Someone is coming. I am not alone.

I think this is something that is naturally built in in people, a need for attention and a need to be special and we are always trying to find a balance.

I am in a mixed race marriage myself, and I have a mixed race son....The racial perception interest is probably always going to be there to some extent.

After a while, the fear became a habit, too.

There is something about Midwest in general, that has kind of an underdog quality.

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.

I got married because I fell in love with this woman. I had a baby with her because we wanted to have children. But that's not because of some philosophical ideal at all, no.

There's nothing more romantic than self-destruction.

Those who refuse to grow, those who only finish school and call it quits regret through life.

When you're close to your family, you want to be close to them.

It would be difficult, in this day and age, to fund art that made racial slurs.

Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man that can comprehend the Triune God.

He who has really prayed to the Master, even once, has nothing to fear. By, praying to him constantly one gets ecstatic love (Prema Bhakti) through his grace.

Most success springs from an obstacle or failure.

Things do not have meaning. We assign meaning to everything.