My mom used to tell me, I can't use this phrase on the radio - but basically don't be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.

An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.

What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.

The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.

I did not know then that this is what life is - just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you're swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.

When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

[E]mpathy - not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance - is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.

If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.

Writing is a team sport.

Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to art and spend their days by choice in the thick of it.

I don't want my reasons to be informed by what people think about what I'm doing.

It's a dream come true to have someone else portray me. Because I've been living this life for a long time, and I'm over myself.

I don't think you can really make television based on what you think audiences want. You can only make stories that you like, because you have to watch it so many times.

Act is the blossom of thought; and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and biter fruitage of his own husbandry

It doesn't matter if your ignorant so long as you can find people to know stuff for you.

As a 25 year director of a non-profit program I began to see the need to shift from only doing projects/programs to also doing policy work.

I feel that I am entitled to trample all other considerations into the dirt in my pursuit of a satisfying pun.

You couldn't say 'I had orders.' You couldn't say 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. [...] Not 'Thou Shalt Not'. Say 'I Will Not'.