“I know realized that this was how you enslaved a people. You didn't just bring them over in chains from Africa. No, you convinced them that they were inferior, not evolved, subhuman, and then you took off their shackles, so they could go to work, you'd still have them enslaved and shackled inside of their minds for hundreds of years. And this system of teaching was fine with most Anglo teachers, because int he act of convincing us, los Mexicanos and the Blacks, we were subhuman, they'd also convinced themselves that they were superior!”

“One of the less attractive aspects of human nature is our tendency to hate the people we haven't treated very well; it's much easier than accepting guilt. If we can convince ourselves that the people we betrayed or enslaved were subhuman monsters in the first place, then our guilt isn't nearly so black as we secretly know that it is. Humans are very, very good at shifting blame and avoiding guilt.”

“You were sixteen years old and you were messed up and alone like a motherfucker. You were also convinced - like totally utterly convinced - that the world was going to blow itself to pieces.”

“You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free!”

“Some of them were confused and angry, but given the same circumstances, I was convinced that I would have turned out just like them. It was the difference in where we were born, and to whom, that separated us---not the difference of who we were.”

“This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.”