I went to the library and began to read some stuff on my own. My discovery of James Baldwin was life-changing. I read Go Tell It on the Mountain first, and that was hugely impactful.

Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.

I don't worship the Bible, I worship the God who gave the Bible.

The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests.

He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all, he was more than the sum of his artistic parts.

My ambition didn't grow out of nowhere. It was planted in me by a community that nurtured me.

Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.

All of us should be much more humble and contrite when we point the finger at somebody else, because four more fingers are pointing back at us.

We can't exempt ourselves from the same moral calculus that we are willing to apply to others.

The language of faith is crucial because it affords human beings the privilege of intimacy with the ultimate.

I was very struck when Min. Farrakhan said if Jesus and Muhammad were here today, they'd be embracing each other. That's a tremendous message that needs to be heard more broadly.

I am giving birth. I am midwife to myself. Now is a new life full of possibilities. I must be strong like a child.

Never start a day or activity without a plan. Learn to plan your work, and then work your plan.

I believe in me. And my family does. And Mrs. V. It's the rest of the world I'm not so sure of.

I have seen the transformative effect that education has in the lives of young women and their communities.

Being on the stage in New York is always exciting because you feel like you're part of the life of the city.

There is a beautiful flow to the study of Zen. If it is not making you happier, then you are not practicing correctly.

There’s great beauty on this world if you just have the eyes to see it.

In most cases, worldly love ends in hatred and deep sorrow.

Let us hope, I prayed, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.

In theory, practice should work like theory. In practice, it doesn't.