Black child poverty is higher. As I write in the epilogue, "Yes we can. No he didn't. President [Barack] Obama didn't push black people backward, but he missed the opportunity to move us forward."

There's no great, white bigot; there's just about 200 million little white bigots out there.

History belongs to she who holds the pen...If we don't tell our stories, they won't be told.

When public policy is directed toward urban spaces, it is directed toward people who sit at the margins.

Frankly, I'd love to see a multiparty system, like we have in some of our European countries. But I'm not sure how to get there.

If people don't know about you, that's not on them, it's on you.

George W. Bush is evil. He is a terrorist. He is evil. He is arrogant. And he is out of control.

President [Barack] Obama's pick of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education was abysmal.

If past behavior is any indication, Donald Trump's behavior would not be acceptable.

We have a very large military community - veterans and others - who basically do believe in the militarism.

Most violence is intra-racial, and much of the violence in African-American communities is a function of drug availability, joblessness and poverty.

But time in only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there'll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.

I'm not perfect. And who knows how many times I've fallen short. We all fall short. That's the amazing thing about the grace of God.

Capitalism gives all of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and hang on to it.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

I know it may seem small and insignificant, but it's not about what it is, it's about what it can become. That's not a seed, any more than you're just a boy.

Kids know me from their Grease DVD, so they instantly respond. You can hear a pin drop when I do my old songs.

How unjust then to meet that person you love, and be kept away from them only because ones bed is made of hay , and the other, feathers.

'Life is a journey, Frannie darling,' Feagan had once told me. "Choose well those with whom you travel." As always, I've followed Feagan's counsel.

I have tried my best to keep my country alive by writing about it.

Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.