I'm not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That's how you make the new -- by putting something else with what you've got. And I'm unashamedly an American integrationist.

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Education is all a matter of building bridges.

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.

When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

Don't let past mistakes make you lose hope of achieving good. Some of those with the worst past have made a great future for themselves.

Nothing stayed, nothing ever changed. But love, only love, that was the true part of the story, no matter what the beginning, middle or end.

111 company is like a dog who dirts those most whom he loves best.

Ideally, I'm also sending a message that everything passes, even hope, and sometimes you have to be patient while you wait for it to come back around again.

I love to work out and do cardio and have a healthy, active lifestyle, but I also am not going to, like, freak out over food.

When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.

Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.

I wouldn't say no to other kinds of musical opportunities. I guess that it just depends on what it was or what it required me to do, and if I felt that it compromised my own soul.

I became the leader because of my father's leadership and I was considered as powerful as same as my own father.

Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.