 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. |
| Getting to the pint where the other is not the enemy is a big leap. |
| What we need in America is a renaissance. We need to go forward by going backward. |
| Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA. |
| The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war. |
| 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. |
| Louis Armstrong, who learned to be in exquisite dress, came from the bottom, and he's not a trash can. |
| Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence. |
| I don't know any women who don't think about what they look like, and I don't know any men who don't think about what women look like. |
| If there's an intellectual highway, there's also an intellectual subway. |
| Everybody has to be reminded that there's another way to be. Another more mysterious, unpredictable way to be that's not necessarily based upon contrivances. |
