America is made up of people who came from someplace else. Even the Native Americans came over the Bering strait... America is what it is because people came from someplace else.

You must leave this world a better place than it would have been if you had not existed.

It occurred to me that no matter where I lived, geography could not save me.

People leave when life becomes untenable where they are.

It was illegal for black people and white people to play checkers together in Birmingham. And there were even black and white Bibles to swear to tell the truth on in many parts of the South.

[The Great Migration] had such an effect on almost every aspect of our lives - from the music that we listen to to the politics of our country to the ways the cities even look and feel.

My parents absolutely did not think of themselves as part of the Great Migration. They knew they were part of a great wave. No one really talked about it in those terms or gave it a name.

From Louisiana, he followed the hyphens in the road that blurred together toward a faraway place, bridging unrelated things as hyphens do.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

But she did love him. I believe it. I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn't deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention.

Fly, on your way, like an eagle / Fly as high as the Sun.

Anyone who is not investing now is missing a tremendous opportunity.

I never ponder counterfactuals.

God doesn’t tell you to do hard things so He can stand back and laugh and watch you struggle. He tells you to do things the things that He knows are gonna work out to your good in the end.

I don't know if that's philosophy or if that's something else, but to me it [digital filming] has an emotional feeling , that this materiality, the loss of the materiality.

I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them, too.

Once an individual's search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering