Being from Africa is the best thing that could have ever ever happened to me. I cannot see it any other way. All of my fundamental principles that were instilled in me in my home from my childhood are still with me.

I maintain the rather old-fashioned view that this is my work and it's in the public arena but that doesn't entitle everyone to know what happened at home before coming here.

When I come home my daughter will run to the door and give me a big hug and everything that's happened that day just melts away.

If we got into a situation where people start burning our records then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history.

In man - in the history of mankind this has happened many times and occupation leaders hang on to the land that they're occupying. People fight to liberate their land. But in the end the people's will is what achieves victory.

That's history. I say history because it happened in the past.

The Deep South has a completely different history both good and bad that is fascinating for everybody. It makes people work together who usually don't and that sounds like a cliche in so many ways but it actually happened... and it happened because of a beautiful idea.

Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not 'What happened?' but rather 'How then shall I live?' And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.

It's in the history books the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

September 11 was terrible but if one goes back over the history of the IRA what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.