"The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up."

"I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti."

"I believe in the law. I think we have a great system of justice. But I do think that system of justice has been corrupted by racism and classism. I think it's difficult for 'poor people' - poor white people, brown people - to be treated fairly before the law in the same way that upper-class people are."

"You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa."

"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

"The echoes of eternity remind us that the essence of humanity is our ability to connect."

"It is a radiant truth that kindness is the invisible thread that binds all kindred spirits together."