Growing up, there was this explosion of B television. 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air,' you have 'Family Matters,' 'A Different World.' I had examples - of black children, black families, black women, black men - that represented who I was.

We think of our prison inmates as the dregs of society, and we scorn them and push them off to the side and forget about them. We have to remember that they are humans, and they have rights, and yes, they did wrong, but we all have one shot at doing wrong, you know?

Whether we are working to pay off student loans, credit card debt, paying for elder or childcare, or even trying to save for retirement, the idea of the American dream still remains just that - a dream.

I remember going through that process of growing my hair out, straightening it, cutting off the relaxed hair. I finally got to a point where I went to the Dominicans because they can straighten it real good. By the end of the day, the part of my hair that had just been pressed straight was already starting to coil back up.

If you think of life and death on a continuum, finding the point where it tips is complicated. It cuts across all political lines and gets to the root of our humanity. It requires faith informed by years of intimacy that you're doing what's right for your loved one.

Mercy is what moves us toward God, while justice makes us tremble in his sight.

I love, when I'm on holiday in cities, going into church and feeling that reverence and that kind of automatic respect: the sort of magic which exists in those kind of religious temples.

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.