I have never thought that the circumstance of God's having forgiven me was any reason why I should forgive myself.
I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform.
You can pay people to teach, But you can't pay them to care.
Until kids decide, 'I am a miracle. I am unique. There is no one else exactly like me,' they can never draw the conclusion, 'Because I'm a miracle, I will never harm another person who's a miracle like me. ' In this slippery world, they all need something to hang on to.
Education is the thing. This black-white bit - I don't deal with people that way. I deal with it as if you are another individual. If you do something that perturbs me or aggravates me, I do not think you've done it because I'm black.
You can't find me 20 children in Chicago, I don't care which section you go in - you can be on Michigan Avenue or here - and they won't be able to tell you that y is a vowel when it's the final syllable in a word, as in Nancy and icy. And no one bothers to teach the rules anymore - "i before e except after c. "
People have to live by rules in the world. Why do we pretend in school that they don't?
There is no rule of law until the Mafia needs lawyers.
Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life - my birth, my upbringing, everything.
If we all knew we were going to live to be 150 years old, we'd all approach our lives very differently.
Maybe the culture is [particularly] shabby now. Maybe it's because I'm over sixty, that I can feel that about everything.