Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Education is all a matter of building bridges.

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.

When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

...Matt. I didn't think they'd kill you... I'm so sorry...

It seemed everything that had ever lived and died in this world had passed through here, had left its indelible imprint.

Asleep she was a painting of a fire. Awake she was the fire itself

One word was the method by which the state collected their information. They could reel in the informants and spread them out like tentacles, ready to sting in any direction.

Give your kids time to dream.

Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!

There's always something in most world folk musics that always seems connected; whether it's a bagpipe or a tambura, there's always some sort of drone instrument, and there's always percussion.

I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.

As with any music that one feels quite close to, I'm very critical, too. I care a lot. I pay a lot of attention.

Magic things are fond of deceptions.