Momma, a welfare cheater. A criminal who couldn't stand to se her kids go hungry, or grow up in slumbs and end up mugging people in dar corners. I guess the system didn't want her to get off relief, the way it kept sending social workers around to be...
And one of my firmest conclusions is that we always think by seeking and drawing parallels to things we know from our past, and that we therefore communicate best when we exploit examples, analogies, and metaphors galore, when we avoid abstract gener...
If we recognize that Spirit is all powerful, and cannot be hurt, and that only Spirit exists, then nothing that happens here matters. And we see everyone and everything from the point of wholeness. Even the ‘deceitful’ thing that happened is prob...
Reading history is good for all of us. If you know history, you know that there is no such thing as a self-made man or self-made woman. We are shaped by people we have never met. Yes, reading history will make you a better citizen and more appreciati...
Life is like a book. The first chapter you read is always exciting and new. You don't want it to end. But it does. The next chapter takes you further into the book of life. Different story than the last. But the most important thing you realize that ...
Besides, who is to say that the feelings he writes in his diary are his true feelings? Who is to say that at each moment while the pen moves he is truly himself? At one moment he might truly be himself, at another he might simply be making things up....
I mean in the community that I grew up in, you know, a very, you know, mixed, almost entirely African Diaspora community, one of the things that we were not ever supposed to say was how much self-hatred and colorism determined and guided what we woul...
I write incredibly slowly. And, on top of that, I spent my entire youth and twenties working like a dog, so one of the things that happened when I finished 'Drown' was that I got busy living. I'd never travelled, I'd never seen anything. So I did as ...
I have a very beautiful room that in my house that we bought in Princeton. It's glass on three sides, and you'd think that's the perfect place to write. Somehow in that nice room I feel too exposed, and I can notice I'm too distracted by things going...
The will of God is sweet tonight, altogether ‘good and acceptable and perfect.’ The considerate love of the Lord Jesus for us seems such a kind thing now. I know it has always been so, but somehow I didn’t see how wise it was when it didn’t s...
Quentin Tarantino is a hip-hop artist. I told him, 'You're hip-hop!' You keep seeing surprises, and a clip here and there, because Quentin is hip-hop. A hip-hop artist will drop a single, leak something over here, and drop something over there 'cause...
I can watch an episode of Jerry Seinfeld, and by the end, I'm just walking around my house, you know, talking like Jerry Seinfeld. 'What is that? What are you doing? Who is it? What's going' - you know, I just had that thing, when I grew up, I'd just...
I like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't b...
Whatever we believe about how we got to be the extraordinary creatures we are today is far less important than bringing our intellect to bear on how do we get together now around the world and get out of the mess that we've made. That's the key thing...
So I was ugly. I was never fat, really, and I never wore headgear or had zits or anything. But I was ugly. I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided - maybe there's like a secret cabal of boys who meet in the locker room and decide who's ugly...
It's time for a new National Anthem. America is divided into two definite divisions. The easy thing to cop out with is sayin' black and white. You can see a black person. But now to get down to the nitty-gritty, it's getting' to be old and young - no...
I've always been a singer in my mind. Fronting a band is something I've never done because I've always done other things. It's something I want to do, and the more I do it, the more and more it feels very natural. I've always been a little timid and ...
To put it differently, as long as mind and heart are caught up in want, in desire, there must be emptiness. You want things, ideas, persons, only when you are conscious of your own emptiness, and that wanting creates a choice. When there is craving t...
For the multifold secret to work only one thing is necessary. You must take action. You must give. You must share. You must act with abandon. Send out waves of love and kindness into the world and then simply wait for the response. Or, better yet, co...
Four years ago, I was just a guy who had a crush a crush on a girl who had a boyfriend. And I had to do the hardest thing that I've ever had to do, which was just to...wait. And a lot of people told me I was crazy to wait this long for a date with a ...
The way you challenge Superman is by having things happen very, very quickly in different places and then asking, 'Who does he save first? What powers must he use to save each person or stop each disaster?' That's one of the ways you make him interes...
