It seems to me everything Shakespeare did was political.

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

Only the living souls can praise the living God.

The only way to see true reality is in solitude. One of the tragedies of human existence is that reality cannot be shared. What's real to you may not be to someone else.

You can find peace amidst the storms that threaten you.

American Idol' has done a great job of defaming my name and throwing a lot of mud at me for the past two years, so that set up a lot of roadblocks for me.

I work so much. If I don't get all the comforts, I will turn mad.

A man's happiness,-to do the things proper to man.

I have some speakers up here, thank God, because last night I didn't have them and I was telling jokes and I had no idea which joke I was telling. So I told jokes twice. I even told that one twice.

To sustain hatred is a very difficult thing to do, year after year. It's exhausting.

Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.

But sometimes imperfect tools lead us toward perfect ends.