“For every summons to a shining city on the hill or a promise of change we can believe in, we are presented with hundreds of examples of mudslinging and appeals to mob mentality. Rudeness is recast as honesty, greed is presented as ambition, and lines in the sand blur and move.”

“Whether we’re the largest, smallest, most or least significant thing in the universe makes for a marvelous late-night discussion. It’s not relevant to how we live in the here and now. We need to look around, take measure of ourselves, and decide what we can do and how much of it we do to improve our lives and the lives of as many others as we can reach.”

“The leaving happened slowly, gradually, as these things do, and before we knew it, we were lost to each other, as if a magician had whisked a cloth off the table, leaving the dishes there, jolted. And when we looked back it was all a blur, time on fast forward, hurtling to an inevitable conclusion.”

“Have faith in the wisdom of that we call change”

“The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying says that death is the graduation ceremony, while living is just a long course in learning and preparing for the next journey. If we acknowledge death as the beginning, then how can we fear it?”

“Ego TrippingI was born in the congoI walked to the fertile crescent and built the sphinxI designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect lightI am badI sat on the throne drinking nectar with allahI got hot and sent an ice age to europe to cool my thirstMy oldest daughter is nefertiti the tears from my birth pains created the nileI am a beautiful womanI gazed on the forest and burned out the sahara desert with a packet of goat's meat and a change of clothesI crossed it in two hoursI am a gazelle so swift so swift you can't catch me For a birthday present when he was threeI gave my son hannibal an elephant He gave me rome for mother's dayMy strength flows ever onMy son noah built new/ark andI stood proudly at the helm as we sailed on a soft summer dayI turned myself into myself and was jesus men intone my loving name All praises All praisesI am the one who would saveI sowed diamonds in my back yardMy bowels deliver uranium the filings from my fingernails are semi-precious jewels On a trip northI caught a cold and blewMy nose giving oil to the arab worldI am so hip even my errors are correctI sailed west to reach east and had to round off the earth as I went The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid across three continentsI am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surrealI cannot be comprehended except by my permissionI mean...I...can fly like a bird in the sky...”

“Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.”