Identity in America is complicated but it's also simple: it's about whom you identify with and who identifies with you.

True patriots measure themselves not by personal wealth or power but by the degree to which they contribute to the community.

The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it?

Today's multiracial Americans are at greater liberty to choose how they'd like to be seen, and under less pressure to pass for white.

We're all better off...when we're all better off.

The Boomers have modeled a set of bad habits, and one grand gesture is not going to unwind all those bad habits.

As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us.

Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass.

To be sure, the United States has profound problems, not least our faltering educational and physical infrastructure.

Society becomes how you behave.

The nativism behind the push to repeal or amend the Fourteenth is ugly and obvious.

Power is a thing of perception. They don't need to be able to kill you. They just need you to think they are able to kill you

My name might be similar, but I'd never say 'Laters, baby.

I belong to the scarce minority of artists who work in good faith, around whom the phenomenal world vanishes, as it happens to the mystics when they give themselves to prayer.

Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.

I like black and white films. I don't exactly know why - probably because there is a stylization which is removed from actual life, unlike a color film.

I think you can make perfectly good television just from people who are genuinely interested, talking to people who genuinely know - simple as it sounds, it can be riveting.

I like being in love, but loving is what is crucial to me. Loving is the reason to live.

I've always related music to those moments when someone turns you loose on something and they haven't told you how to do it.

The violence betwen women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.

As an artist myself I don't like to be preached. I want to enjoy myself, so I kind of use that perspective to make music.