“The Kennedys decided we’re going to do an airlift. We’re going to go out to Africa and we’re going to start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so that they can learn what a wonderful country America is. And this young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country."

“I began feeling the way I imagine an actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream...he realizes that he's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him. The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic. ”

“I screwed up.”

“The man had received a chemical treatment, the article explained, to lighten his complexion. He had paid for it with his own money. He expressed some regret about trying to pass himself off as a white man, was sorry about how badly things had turned out. But the results were irreversible. There were thousands of people like him, black men and women back in America who’d undergone the same treatment in response to advertisements that promised happiness as a white person.

“I like being president because i get a cool house”

“Aku tersandung pada salah satu rahasia yang tersimpan dengan baik tentang orang-orang kulit hitam: kebanyakan orang kulit hitam tidak tertarik dengan revolusi; kebanyakan kami merasa lelah dengan masalah ras.”

“Be conscious of God and speak always the truth,”

“This is the moment we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.”

“To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”

“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!”

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

“People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.”

“When Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he’d expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry.”

“I tossed a stick into the fire. “Attitudes aren’t so different in America,” I told Francis. “You are probably right,” he said. “But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”

“Let it be said by our children's children thta when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried frth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”