If the house is to be set in order, one cannot begin with the present; he must begin with the past.

We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.

It was necessary, as a black historian, to have a personal agenda.

It gets to whether we're a teacher-education model or a movement for social justice. I would say we're about the latter.

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.

The two things I was positive about in life were that I was going to be a teacher at a boarding school or an operative with the CIA posted abroad. I could write a book about all the things I was sure about.

The important thing to know is that life will always deal us a few bad cards, but we have to play those cards the best we can. And we can play to win. This was one lesson I picked up when I was a teenager. It has been my guiding principle ever since. When I wanted something, the best person to depend on was myself.