“Since my arrival in Rome, I have had many opportunities to wonder if compassion’s opposite is cruelty, or to reflect whether or not indifference would serve as a better black to its white.”

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

“Everytime I look at a zebra, I can't figure out whether it's black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.”

“One result for many people is a tendency to think that power comes from cruelty or indifference. But, in reality such things are not powerful, because cruelty and indifference emerge not from a self that is in posession of itself but from a self that is imprisoned in its own inner drama”

“Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.”

“I've asked myself many times whether this was better than watching you grow old and indifferent beside me.”