The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

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I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.

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Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

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Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.

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Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.

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I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense, but not irrational, nor naïve - because art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

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All important things are hard.

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I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are.

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Liberation means you don't have to be silenced.

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You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative - no author does, I can tell you - you could nevertheless create it.

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