There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

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There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

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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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All important things are hard.

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Laughter is more serious than tears.

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Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

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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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It's important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

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

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Liberation means you don't have to be silenced.

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