“Let's get this started, people. It won't be long before we all lose our minds.”

“Drugs is a government game, Bilal. A way to rob us of our best black men, our army. Everyone who plays the game loses. Then they get you right back where we started, in slavery! Then they get to say "This time you did it to yourself." I won't play that game.”

“We all lose people. We all have to live in the aftermath. It’s how we move forward that counts, but sometimes we are tethered to something in our past that won’t let us move forward.”

“Long before we even lose our lives, we lose our souls. Tragic but true. Some carry on—willing to make the sacrifices, putting what is perceived as important before anything else. Some tread into the dark—wasting moments of grace, letting themselves suffer from their own decisions or the other’s domination. Some continue to love, give too much, and not leave even a little love for themselves.”

“I think we live our lives in other people's hearts and minds. Alone by ourselves we're not very much good at all. But when we let someone else in with their stories and all their sights and sounds and songs and smells and sensations, we suddenly start building up libraries, filling boxes and drawers with them, books and shelves and chests...”

“People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.”