Jail is just another micro-society. It just happens that here, the problems are far more out in the open, we don't live with the facades of lies that democracy or capitalism creates for us.

I think that by telling the truth and by attempting to be a good citizen, somehow I've ended up playing with fire. And that's really scary.

We're just trying to figure out what being a good citizen is, what participating in a democracy is, what taking responsibility for being an American citizen in a global context means to us.

You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders. You can't do that, and they should not be held there. They need rehabilitative therapy.

I really don't feel good about leaving my house anymore. I don't feel really good about being anywhere in New York City alone anymore.

I think in short order all of us need to act like we are citizens with not only rights, but also duties.

I can be all pissed off at the oppression of the state, but what does that really mean? Well, it's the tacit consent of a public.

I cannot speak adequately, especially considering my race and my privilege, to the violence of the NYPD or the police in racial terms. That is something that I cannot speak adequately to.

My town was all-white and shut down Section 8 housing because they didn't want black people to move into the town. And I thought that was wrong - duh.

I had a sense that my mother was struggling, when I was a kid, working twelve hour days, making $12,000 a year with two kids in a trailer park.

I felt like there wasn't a political discourse. I felt like there was just one set of values, and any one set of values was wrong; that there should at least be room for conversation.

I would rather my descendants have greater abilities and a greater knowledge of the love of Christ than I do, much like standing on one's shoulders in order to get a clearer view of the valley.

Race doesn't determine the quality of one's heart

Defect-free software does not exist.

In an interview, former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said he does not have a racist bone in his body. However, he admitted he has three sexist bones and his spine is homophobic.

Memory. My poison, my food.

...the goodness of God is the highest object of prayer and it reaches down to our lowest need.

On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.

Be patient with all that is uncertain in your heart...do not search for answers, which will not be given: you will not be able to live them, and its importat to live everything.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

Delay not till tomorrow to be wise; tomorrow's sun to thee may neve rise.