“Black lives are considered to be substantially cheaper than white lives in this country.”

“We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to movies than to make them.”

“The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.”

“The difference for ordinary black Americans, as opposed to NFL stars, is that this has been a powerful driver of downward mobility. Just a quick comparison of black and white neighborhoods is enough to illustrate the particular challenges that face black families as they reach for middle class, or try to keep their position. The key fact is this: Even after you adjust for income and education, black Americans are more likely than any other group to live in neighborhoods with substantial pockets of poverty.”

“Life's a choice: you can live in black and white, or you can live in colour. I'll take every shade of the rainbow and the gazillion in between!”

“The average African-American family in this country making $100,000, which is, you know, decent money, actually lives in the same kind of neighborhood that the average white family making $35,000 a year lives in. That is totally tied to the legacy of enslavement and Jim Crow and the input and the idea in the mind that white people and black people are somehow deserving of different things.”

“Man cannot live on charm alone, and an ambitious man cannot live on anything less than wealth, good social connections and substantial political influence.”

“It was as if I suddenly went to a foreign country but didn't know the language, but had read enough and had a passionate interest, and was eager to live there, I wanted to live in this land; I had to live there, and master the language. [reacting on Pollock's 'Black and White' paintings show in 1951; Frankenthaler saw his painting art then for the first time in her life]”

“Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.”

“The young whites, and blacks, too, are the only hope that America has, the rest of us have always been living in a lie.”