“Family is more important than anything.”

“Anyone hurts my family, I slap them down. A man does for family. That's one of the rules I got from my pa. His rules for being a man.”

“Some days in the camp you prayed to live; some days you prayed to die quick. Some days you didn't bother praying, knowing there was no sense to anything.”

“Racism, Dr. Sam. I worry for my kids about racism. Racism doesn't appear to take holidays or time off. What can I do about this stuff?”

“These young people are going to change the world.”

“Kids are important. The most important thing.”

“In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.”

“Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.”

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the takingit away from those who have a different complexion or slightlyflatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you lookinto it too mu...”

“You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep t...”

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ”

“Men can be relentless," she agrees, "when they think a woman belongs to them.”

“He could almost hear the wail of pain that went up from his heart. It was a sharp terrible personal pain the kind of pain that comes only when someone to whom you have never done any harm turns on ...”

“Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.”

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”