Growing up in inner-city neighborhoods, there's a particular structure, which I'm sure is true of most social contexts. The type of person you are determines the role you play.

My stepdad didn't have a father growing up, so he didn't know how to have a father-son style conversation. Plus, we had a tense relationship in which he never really offered me advice.

My graduation was an amazing moment for my family, my community. In my early childhood, we lived on a subsidized income, with government assistance - at one point when I was growing up, my mother was making $14,000 a year. Now I had made it out of the hood, so to speak.

Moving forward, hopefully the platform my career has given me will allow me to continue to be a voice in culture, whether that's doing lectures on campus or writing books or whatever that looks like. I feel like that's really the lane that I uniquely connect with.

I'm not really much of a shopper. I have to say that I'd definitely prefer good sex. What makes good sex? Oh my god. I think you need to feel free and you have to really trust the other person. And you have to have that strange, mysterious chemical connection.

Prayer is an act of love; words are not needed. Even if sickness distracts from thoughts, all that is needed is the will to love.

Many years before I had left a beautiful country and a rich nation and I returned to that country six years later to find it fundamentally changed and in a state of upheaval, and in great spiritual and material need.

Nobody tells you that they don't believe in you. I had tremendous self-belief and faith in my sensibilities.