Some of us make it out. But the game is played with loaded dice. I wish I had known more, and I wished I had known it sooner.

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.

Jealousy is the loss of joy.

A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.

The White House is saying Donald Trump has 'zero percent chance' of being elected. Isn't that a little high?

The mountains too, at a distance, appear airy masses and smooth, but seen near at hand they are rough.

I think most people would be surprised at the length of the day whilst you're campaigning and then the variety of things that you do and you're asked to do.

[W]e are almost always in one place with our minds somewhere quite other.

Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.

Lines don't make beautiful women less beautiful

The strong experience of nature... is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work.

Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs and flaming hair, But desire gratified Plants fruits of life and beauty there.