The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it?

True patriots measure themselves not by personal wealth or power but by the degree to which they contribute to the community.

Today's multiracial Americans are at greater liberty to choose how they'd like to be seen, and under less pressure to pass for white.

We're all better off...when we're all better off.

The Boomers have modeled a set of bad habits, and one grand gesture is not going to unwind all those bad habits.

Identity in America is complicated but it's also simple: it's about whom you identify with and who identifies with you.

As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us.

Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass.

To be sure, the United States has profound problems, not least our faltering educational and physical infrastructure.

Society becomes how you behave.

The nativism behind the push to repeal or amend the Fourteenth is ugly and obvious.

If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.

One feels the insignificance of the individual, and it makes one happy.

Freedom and democracy, That's the word from Washington every day. Put America to sleep with warm milk and clichés, And people are expendable along the way.

The plant kingdom covers the entire earth, offering our senses great pleasure and the delights of summer.

I don't go out and go to parties and do all of that.

I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it.

I want to be age appropriate. I don't want to be that girl you see walking away and she looks 25 and then she turns around and she looks 90.

I'll do my dreaming with my eyes wide open, and I'll do my looking back with my eyes closed.

Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center.

What one cannot, another can.