"What drives people to public service is a sense of possibility. If you haven't sensed that possibility you don't get started in the same way, you don't feel you can have an impact."

"Eyes is the attempt to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and to create an emotional, intellectual constituency. But what do you do after that? The black community doesn't have institutions that pick up such moments and preserve them."

"We don't have a full black community in Boston. Our people are scattered. There's a middle class where I live in Highland Park but it's not like a piece of Washington or Chicago."

"Everybody needs history but the people who need it most are poor folks - people without resources or options."

"Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make."

"People see you as an object, not as a person, and they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don't have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart."

"Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote."

"In the depths of adversity, the mind is a garden where thoughts are the seeds."