I thank my mother (Ma, you're only second cause you got the dedication), who used to make me write essays whenever I got into trouble, explaining exactly what I'd done and why I'd done it.

On our life map, he drew a bright circle around twelve through eighteen. This was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to reemerge on corners and prison tiers.

No matter was the professional talkers tell you, I never met a black boy who wanted to fail.

This is one of those stories where the feeling of the moment stands in for visual details.

In those days, boxing was very glamorous and romantic. You listened to fights on the radio, and a good announcer made it seem like a contest between gladiators.

Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do, it makes you want to hide under the coffee table.

I wouldn't say we were doing that. I think we probably stopped thinking. Though it took a while to stop thinking.

When I was 16, I made some little 35mm documentaries about the poor in London. I went round Notting Hill, which was a real slum in the 1950s, shooting film.

Inflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes. The fact is that socialism and inflation are cause and effect, they feed on each other!

Each of us have a gift, you see, given us freely by the universe. And each of us with every breath gives something back

We're really serious about reinventing everything that needs reinventing.

For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.

The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.