Centuries-old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place. Here is the essential truth. We are better together than we are apart.

You can't hide behind race any more. You can't hide behind class structure any more. You can't hide behind family. You need to produce.

Race in America is not a problem you can go over, or around or under. You've got to go through it.

One of the things that the Hillary Clinton campaign has done, I think all the mayors in America would agree, is have a detailed plan about how that money actually gets down to the ground fast.

The city of New Orleans showed America what it takes to rebuild a great place. We're all going together, and we're not leaving anybody behind.

The people of New Orleans have gotten to rock bottom. And the only way out in my mind is for them to really understand it, and then to really choose to get better.

I love Mardi Gras. I'm a street rat.

It is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future. History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done.

They were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.

Why is a carrot more orange than an orange?

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")

No other art can compare with cinema in the force, precision, and starkness with which it conveys awareness of facts and aesthetic structures existing and changing within time.

You have to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandmother was.

I have tried to remember throughout that poetry is made by flesh-and-blood human beings. It is a bloody art. It lives on a human scale and thrives when it is passed from hand to hand.

I want to see people do more than simply raise their hand when they come to Christ. Where are the totally changed lives?

In a way, everything concerning a movie leaves me cold.

To me, true rock 'n' roll has a lot of bottom in it.

My suspicion is that once you have literacy in place, the readership has not changed very much.

I believe in aging gracefully