I Think Literacy Is Everything.

You Have To Have A Canon So The Next Generation Can Come Along And Explode It.

What's Fascinated Me From The Time I Was A Little Kid Was The Way We Construct Our Lives Through Stories.

Very Few, If Any, First-generation Black Or White Or Asian Kids Will Pursue A Ph.d. They'll Pursue The Professions For Economic Security. Many Will Go To Law School And/or Business School.

Our Society Is Driven Today By So Much Ethnic Discord. We Have Black Lives Matter, Which I Praise And Celebrate. We Have The Demagogues Stereotyping Muslims And Resurrecting Racist Stereotypes They Used To Visit On Us. The Larger Goal Is To Show That We Are All The Same, We All Come From Africa, And We All Have The Same Larger Family Tree. It's About The Fundamental Unity Of The Human Community.

Really, The Values Under Which My Generation Was Raised In The '50s Were Immigrant Values Even Though We Weren't Immigrants. The Greatest Thing You Could Be Was A College-educated Negro.