What did I know of loving anything, beyond a longing, beyond being biased in one woman's direction.

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.

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I'm right.

No matter how bleak and black her existence became, the familiar sight of the moon restored something within her, small as it was—like tiny fluttering wings of flame beating back the darkness.

In sum, then, "thinking about thinking" has to be a principal ingredient of any empowering practice of education.

The damnable frustration of revenge. Revenge is for dreams...never for reality.

There's no freedom like the freedom that comes from accepting yourself.

Precise knowledge is the only true knowledge, and he who does not teach exactly, does not teach at all.

Contrary to the received wisdom, global markets are not unregulated. They are regulated to produce inequality.

If you're not enjoying your work, you should either change your attitude, or change your job.

I've always made sequels, even when I was making Super 8 movies if the audience liked it.

Yela represents hunger, life, light, fire, power. Wolf speaks to my fighting spirit. The soul I put in my music.