I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.

There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.

If, in moving through your life, you find yourself lost, go back to the last place where you knew who you were, and what you were doing, and start from there.

If every moment is sacred and if you are amazed and in awe most of the time when you find yourself breathing and not crazy, then you are in a state of constant thankfulness, worship and humility.

If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it's probably not broad enough a coalition.

Mothering/nurturing is a vital force and process establishing relationships throughout the universe.

The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail... and I'd never heard it before in my life.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.

Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn't have religion

Sometimes losses in life are not losses at all. They are simply the evidence God provides, in order to build a story so profound, that it will cause social change.

Having been dumped so many times in my life, I thought I could sympathize with Bellas character.

If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world.

There wasn't an episode of 'Will & Grace' that didn't begin with my voice saying, 'Will & Grace' is taped before a live studio audience.

I think it's critical that we return national security issues to the center of the overall political debate in America.

Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you look up and realize that you're one of those people you see on the train talking to themselves?

Human beings have enormous resilience.

Obviously I'm not a role model for impressionable youth.

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.