Food might be more immediately important than history but if you don't understand what's been done to you - by your own people and the so-called 'they' - you can never get around it.

What drives people to public service is a sense of possibility. If you haven't sensed that possibility you don't get started in the same way, you don't feel you can have an impact.

If you're black in America, race is a factor in your life. Start with that assumption.

We don't have a full black community in Boston. Our people are scattered. There's a middle class where I live in Highland Park but it's not like a piece of Washington or Chicago.

On the one hand, there is no reason that a black person needs to live a portion of his or her life being concerned about the people of color around him. On the other hand, if you don't you're crazy.

Everybody needs history but the people who need it most are poor folks - people without resources or options.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

Character matters leadership descends from character.

Wait and hope!

When the gender role starts to descend, boys get into the masculine box.

Mother always said she was a size 7 woman she kept wrapped in fat to prevent bruising.

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?

Sometimes you can learn things from the way a person denies something. The choice of lies can be almost as helpful as the truth.

No one complains of being a prisoner of love who has ever been a prisoner of loneliness.

When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.

Unless you know a lot more about something than I do, I am not really that interested. I have too much information already.