It is amazing how much we can endure when we are convinced there is a purpose to our struggle.
I dedicate all my time to baseball, because when you come from where I come from, you don't want to risk anything.
I don't have to get a pitch down the middle. If I like the pitch-even if it's 15 inches off the plate, and that's the pitch I wanted-I'm swinging.
I might be shy, but in the field, where I have to do my work, I do it. I let my bat speak for myself.
What I do is see the ball, hit the ball.
I just have to come back tomorrow and try again,. . . I have to look at the ball and keep swinging.
I don't think about how many people are watching me. I'm just happy to play baseball for myself.
Sometimes it's the things that are all around us that are hardest to see, especially love.
. . remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.
We remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.
In terms of fiction, there are a number of writers who are thinking about the future of the environment whose work complements mine. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 is a great example, as is Tobias Buckell's novel Arctic Rising.