What's The Best Thing You Can Do

The Horror Of Class Stratification, Racism, And Prejudice Is That Some People Begin To Believe That The Security Of Their Families And Communities Depends On The Oppression Of Others, That For Some To Have Good Lives There Must Be Others Whose Lives Are Truncated And Brutal.

Two Or Three Things I Know, Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure, And One Of Them Is That To Go On Living I Have To Tell Stories, That Stories Are The One Sure Way I Know To Touch The Heart And Change The World

... Suffering Does Not Ennoble. It Destroys. To Resist Destruction, Self-hatred, Or Lifelong Hopelessness, We Have To Throw Off The Conditioning Of Being Despised, The Fear Of Becoming The They That Is Talked About So Dismissively, To Refuse Lying Myths And Easy Moralities, To See Ourselves As Human, Flawed, And Extraordinary. All Of Us Extraordinary

Things Come Apart So Easily When They Have Been Held Together With Lies.

If I Could Have Found What I Needed At Thirteen, I Would Not Have Lost So Much Of My Life Chasing Vindication Or Death. Give Some Child, Some Thirteen-year Old, The Hope Of The Remade Life. Tell The Truth. Write The Story That You Were Always Afraid To Tell. I Swear To You There Is Magic In It.