My fondest hope is that 'Roots' may start black white brown red yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man that would make me feel 90 feet tall.

What we hope to achieve is a society that doesn't value a white man because he's a white man but also doesn't value a woman because she's a woman or a black because he's a black.

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire Barack Obama is president of the United States is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again.

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

I'm hoping someday that some kid black or white will hit more home runs than myself. Whoever it is I'd be pulling for him.

Confronting a stadium audience you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and of course you can't see the alleged billions watching at home either so the degree to which you are intimidated is quite low.

I'm just like so many women - I was frustrated I had these white pants that I had spent a lot of money on and you get home and you think 'What am I really supposed to wear under this?' So it was a frustrated consumer moment.

And I came back and it was great 'cuz George had set up all these flowers all over the studio saying welcome home. So then we got it together again. I always felt it was better on the White one for me. We were more like a band you know.

White House operatives went to great lengths to show Obama shifting focus from wars abroad to domestic issues at home.