“Such was the hidden power of nature, capable of producing extreme beauty and cruelty at the same time.”

“Its not going to be easy, but its kind of like ripping off a band-aid. Painful for a minute, but it has to be done.”

“Once you deposit that money in your checking account, it becomes the banks money and youre just another one of their creditors.”

“We had won the war, but when the insurgency reared its ugly head, we lost everything we had gained.”

“War is the most profitable business on earth”

“To the heads of the new Islamic State, their God was money and power on earth.”

“There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.”

“I didn't get the impression that the policeman cared much about the whole thing either. After another thirty minutes of ruthless interrogation ('Can you ve'fy you eat banan' pancake?') he let me go...”

“Familiar words for dead black boys portrayed as complicit in their own demise. Michael Donald's body had been hanged on a Mobile street, and the police were doing the same thing to his name.”

“How one tragedy affects so many others.”

“She had wanted her son to stand for what he believed and to be respectful. And he had died for believing his friends had a right to play their music loud, to be American teenagers.”

“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”

“The only honest way to approach the question of whiteness and blackness is to start by accepting that these are arbitrary categories that were invented in the 17th and 18th century in order to just...”

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be ...”