Telling your story is transformative. For both the storyteller and their audience, a new bridge to understanding is created.

We're willing to spend countless dollars putting people who need help in cages, and then when they get out we say you can't have a job, and you can't have housing, and because you don't have either, we're going to take your kids, too.

I can remember, as a child, the happy days of us all piling into the car and going to the drive-in. And that was a weekly routine for my father. He was a proud black man, and that all sort of vanished as America began to export jobs.

I got caught back up in the underworld because the upperworld really doesn't have a place for people with criminal histories.

We haven't done such a great job, so I don't know why God couldn't have started over somewhere else. I don't necessarily believe in aliens coming to the States, and I don't buy into the government cover-up.

There is a very serious fiscal-policy question of, 'Are we running our overall fiscal policy such that we as a government can pay our bills?'

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

Anyone who believes in the essential role government can play in improving people's lives must also be the toughest critics of those who abuse the public trust.