“The idea of voluntary segregation went against every value I had been taught. What did being born black have to do with excellence?”

“Research experts want to know what can be done about the values of poor segregated children; and this is a question that needs asking. But they do not ask what can be done about the values of the people who have segregated these communities. There is no academic study of the pathological detachment of the very rich...”

“I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. ”

“Find value in what we've been taught is worthless.”

“Why did I accept death? But I will ask,what use was life to me after that revolver had been raised against me by the being I adored?”

“Every time they have somebody born in the movies, it is a little boy. They never have little girls being born. What makes boys so great and woooonnnderfullll? I can do anything a boy can do”