The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back.
The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn.
I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.
Imagine if you succeeded in making the world perfect for your children what a shock the rest of life would be for them.
I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes.
In the event of an oxygen shortage on airplanes, mothers of young children are always reminded to put on their own oxygen mask first, to better assist the children with theirs. The same tactic is necessary on terra firma. There's no way of sustaining our children if we don't first rescue ourselves. I don't call that selfish behavior. I call it love.
If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control - myself.
The sponsors of war closely resemble the weapons they create. And smart bombs, depleted uranium, land mines, rockets and tanks, rather than protect 'widows and orphans and strangers at the gate', are designed precisely to create 'widows and orphans', to transform strangers into enemies and enemies into corpses.
Love happens when people forgive.
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.