If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

In one sense, Obama's point couldn't be clearer: race is a distraction from class-based inequities. And if we dismiss working-class resentment as camouflaged racism, we will continue to be distracted by the spectre of race.

Music - not just the lyrics, but the music itself - expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them.

Expression and thought are inextricably linked: crude language permits only crude thinking.

I grew up on the East Coast, and we always used to say, 'Go get your hustle on,' whether it was playing sports or making money. You do what you have to do to do what you want to do.

The world view of economic development has completely changed: it is no longer believed to be driven by human labour, as Karl Marx said, or by capital, as Alfred Marshall stated, but is knowledge-driven.

The money I pay for my cultural experiences came willingly from my own pocket - they were not the result of bread being removed from the mouths of the poor so that Miss Thing here could mince off to the circus smelling of roses.

We were taught North Korea is a heaven. They told us how people in western countries die in hospital or have no money to study in school.