All Quotes

There are many positive things to say about the black community. No question about it. ”

Certain people are just saying, 'Look, I'm a businessperson and I have to run a business effectively and I want people who are going to do the job, who have the training and the education and the personality traits - the soft skills.' ”

I maintain that the period during the first half of the 1990s, the period in which rising inequality reached its peak, was a period in which we came very, very close to a demagogic immobilization of racism in this society. ”

My research clearly reveals that if we want to put inner-city workers to work immediately, we just can't rely on the private sector. They don't want to touch them; they don't want to hire them. ”

If you're not working, over time you're much more likely to develop attitudes and orientations and behavior patterns that are associated with casual or infrequent work. And then when you open up opportunities for people, you notice that these attitudes, orientations, habits and styles also change. ”

Crime, family dissolution, welfare, and low levels of social organization are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work. ”

I did not win and in fact I was called into the principal's office for a consultation with my parents. But that was the beginning of my literary career. ”

I like stirring things up. I'm on the side of the kids more than I am on the adults. And occasionally I find some adults that have that same mischievous streak, so I don't get in too much trouble. ”

I've always liked getting away with just a little bit of what you're not supposed to. Like my first book, Billy's Booger, got me in trouble with the principal's office. ”

And I was lucky enough to have teachers that really, really looked out for me and really encouraged all that. And in rural Louisiana, that was a rare thing back then. ”