You think about every piece of idiomatic speech adopted by white men over the past ten or twenty years; virtually all of it comes from hip-hop.

Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.

The gestures and the swagger and the attitude of black men is imitated everywhere in American culture, but people still find black men intolerable.

It was always a false assumption that white American writers cannot write novels about race unless they're approaching it from a very oblique angle.

Only when you leave do you appreciate what binds American people and our cultural experience together.

Prajna is insight into the world. And a lot of that insight has to do with karma and the way karma affects our lives.

The truth is that an intellectual life is available to almost anyone, almost anywhere, if they work hard enough and are given some kind of access point.

I was raised with opera and very white-bread folk music like The Kingston Trio. That was about as daring as it got. So when I discovered hip-hop as a teenager, at first it made no sense to me at all.

I had a lot of expectations placed on me because I was already having some success with my short stories. That was not a good situation to be in. That by itself took a long time to overcome.

There is something very quiet and reserved and pessimistic about Obama's temperament that is deeply un-American. There are those people who claim, "Oh, he wasn't born here" - all that is nonsense.

The politics of transgender identity are really complicated. And the debate over how much of gender is biological and how much of it is socially constructed is a very complex debate.

Beauty is something I cannot seem to take as a given. It seems to lie too disadvantageously in the eyes of beholders.

Extend your hand to help others and be an example.

Every worker needs a decent and legal source of income.

I think that the pageant world overall is pretty spectacular, it just makes you feel good about yourself and leaves you with great friends.

I'm used to working alone. Frankly with some of the actors I've worked with, I've felt like I was working alone.

Everything begins with the resolve to take the first step. From that action, wisdom arises and change begins. Without action, nothing changes.

History is littered with the wars which everybody knew would never happen.

I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.

Success can breed contempt, and a casual attitude toward danger.

Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.