“The only people who have never had a problem with me speaking in their venues are independent bookstores and libraries. Universities and humanities councils have canceled me, but never an independent bookstore.”

You can rest assured that if you devote your time and attention to the highest advantage of others, the Universe will support you, always and only in the nick of time.

I’ve been around enough to know what it takes to get a team to reach its potential, and I want players who want to reach their potential.

Every time you see a black romance it’s over-the-top. There always has to be extreme hostility between the sexes. He has to cheat. She has to show him how independently strong she is, not just as a woman but as a black woman.

Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.

Education is a right, it’s a journey, it’s a process, and it’s something we have to stand for, as hard as it is.

We just watched this budget debacle right? Seventy-three percent of Americans want to tax the rich. Why can’t the politicians respond to that? Because they are the rich. And they are beholden to the rich. It’s a captured system.

I think Bowe Bergdahl, if he deserted, is a hero – I think throughout history we should build monuments to the unknown deserters.

Imperialism or globalization – I don’t have to care what it’s called to hate it.

Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don’t have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory.

I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and—if you’re not careful—those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book.

That’s where we all kind of were in the mid-1960s. Students for a Democratic Society grew from a small group of socialists at the university of Michigan into a national organization, and in many ways, its growth was driven by the Vietnam War.

The audience is like my instrument. It’s not just me up there, it’s collaborative.

I’m very interested in people who are in a situation that needs a little puzzling out. The thing that gets me started on a story is a person in a tough situation.

The way it happened was that we were advocating for a strike that we advocated that the faculty should strike in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle.

If you’re going to help somebody, sneak in, sneak out, do what you can. I just sneak along and do my thing and meet wonderful people, some people I’ve never met, new friends.

There is nothing to fear from truth….Being truthful is essential to being an independent thinker and obtaining greater understanding of what is right.

To make money in the markets, you have to think independently and be humble.

I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than self-control.

She’s not your unicorn. She’s her own mother fucking dragon.

Ultra-independence is a trauma response.

I hate the idea of always having to interpret other people’s ideas and thoughts and words, because I’m very independent and, I guess, a free thinker.

Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.

The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the ’60s: Independent fire!