To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world.

Obama's presence opened a new field for writers, and what began as curiosity about the man himself eventually expanded into curiosity about the community he had so consciously made his home and all the old, fitfully slumbering questions he'd awakened about American identity.

We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory.

In comics, you have to imagine what happens. I really loved it; I loved collecting. I loved following the adventures and figuring out what was going to happen next. I was a huge X-Men fan; I was a huge Spider-Man fan, and, to large degree, I remain one. It's literature for me; it's art.

Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.

I wanted to be at my sister's funeral, but my family has always had a complicated dynamic.

It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.

Studies have indicated there is a strong correlation between the shortages of nurses and morbidity and mortality rates in our hospitals.