The grand irony, however, is that Southern segregation was not brought to an end, nor redneck violence dramatically reduced, by violence.

You can meet a young person who goes to school and is really enthusiastic, but if a sufficiently strong personality convinces them that this is a waste of time, that person might flunk out.

If there's an intellectual highway, there's also an intellectual subway.

You'd never know that listening to people in the UN but tribalism is the father of racism.

Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.

As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.

Your ethnic or sexual identity, what region of the country you're from, what your class is - those aspects of your identity are not the same as your aesthetic identity.

Our society has gotten to the point where we might soon become less and less shocked by any kind of violence.

When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.

All of us are made up of the stories that we listen to, the ones we disagree with and the ones that we agree with.

Sleepiness seemed to be creeping out of the ground and up their legs, and falling softly out of the air upon theirheads and eyes.

Try to imagine where we'd be without you, darlin', and then maybe you'll see just how lucky we got.

When I met scientists, I found them to be as various as any other group of people.

Well, Detroit Institute is kind of a key - probably the largest permanent collection of puppets in the US.

When you pass through the fire, you pass through humble.

If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.

Star canto: star speaks light, and world to world Repeats the passage of the universe To God; the name of Christ--the one great word Well worth all languages in earth or heaven.

It turns out Dimitri had a friend, who had a friend, and despite the best security in the Moroi world, we managed to get into the Court's prison facilities.

They say everybody gets 15 minutes. I hope I'm just inside the first minute and the next 14 go really slow.

When I was 17, I had my first proper girlfriend, and on Valentine's Day, I painted a canvas of her, bought her a massage, put flowers on the stairs, and ran a bath.