When I first arrived in the country, I really didn't speak much of the language. I knew two words coming here, and they were 'Hello' and 'Shut up.'

When I was coming to this country, I heard about its promises.

My family called me the 'why kid' growing up. I always needed to know why something is happening, why I had to do something, why whatever.

Hope will be found by understanding that diversity is the essence of the American Dream and why we need each other to fulfill it.

One of the best things we can do for our country, for advancing our children, is to upgrade our child care system.

It is impossible to read for pleasure from something to which you are both father and mother, born in such travail that the writer despises the thing that enslaved him.

Yeah, you got the family dog and the white picket fence, and you just think that's all there is. Some of us had to grow up in poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods, and we just had to adapt to our environment. I know that it's wrong. But people act like it's some crazy thing they never heard of. They don't know.

I've never been called the black sheep. Everybody in my family had something weird about them, like, 'What's wrong with you?!' We all were black sheep.