The idea of progress - the notion that human history is the history of human betterment - dominated the world view of the West between the Enlightenment and the First World War.

No nation has a single history, no people a single song.

Democracy is difficult and demanding. So is history. It can crack your voice; it can stir your soul; it can break your heart.

When business became big business - conglomerates employing hundreds and even thousands of people - companies divided themselves into still smaller units.

Throughout the nineteen-seventies and eighties, especially during periods of recession, employees were moved from offices to cubicles.

The Olympics is an imperfect interregnum, the parade of nations a fantasy about a peace never won. It offers little relief from strife and no harbor from terror.

I always just wanted to be a writer, not necessarily a particular kind of writer.

My grandmother, who taught me how to cook, didn't know how to read.

Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis. You can sell a lot of junk to a lot of people by inventing a stage of life and giving it a name.

The Karen Ann Quinlan case is where the right to life and the right to die got bound together, and I don't think they've ever gotten untangled.

Well-reported news is a public good; bad news is bad for everyone.

My mother liked to command me to do things I found scary. I always wanted to stay home and read. My mother only ever wanted me to get away.

Clarence Darrow, America's best-known trial lawyer, was also one of American history's most skilled orators.

In kindergarten, you can learn how to be a citizen of the world.

Americans, among the marryingest people in the world, are also the divorcingest.

Scientific management promised to replace rules of thumb with accurate measurements.

Middle-class mothers and fathers turned out to be a very well-defined consumer group, easily gulled into buying almost anything that might remedy their parental deficiencies.

Historians once assumed that when childhood mortality was high, people must not have loved their children very much; it would have been too painful. Research has since proved that assumption wrong.

Epidemics follow patterns because diseases follow patterns. Viruses spread; they reproduce; they die.

The stories about epidemics that are told in the American press - their plots and tropes - date to the nineteen-twenties, when modern research science, science journalism, and science fiction were born.

The idea that debt is necessary for trade, and has to be forgiven, is consequent to the rise of a market economy. The idea that debt is wrong and should be punished is a feature of a moral economy.

Americans like to get rich fast. That this means we go broke fast, too, is something that we have become very good at forgetting. Our ignorance of history is matched only by our unfailing optimism; it's actually part of our optimism.

If you can't help me grow, there's no point with you being in my life.

Common is one of the nicest people I've ever met, and to describe him as a vile rapper because he has an opinion... just says a lot about the state of America. You are allowed to have an opinion in the United States - he's never harmed anybody, he just has an opinion about a president that wasn't good for our country.

For me, hair is an accoutrement. Hair is jewelry. It's an accessory.

I'm going to do as much as I can with this life, and then I'm going to make sure to take some time off and be simple and ride my bike and hang out with friends.

Soul music is about longevity and reaching and touching people on a human level - and that's never going to get lost.

I like a man who smells good. Puts on cologne; lotions his body. It keeps me wanting. I like feeling that way.

If I feel really ugly or unhappy, sometimes I'll choose bright colors so they'll make me feel good. Yellows, pinks, light blues and orange. I just want to feel good all the time if I can. And colors and hairstyles and all that kind of helps out.

I was reared in a Jehovah's Witness household. I was taught that every man should be judged by his deeds and not his color, and I firmly stand where my grandmother left me.

I love foods that start in my cheeks and then vibrate up.

I just think it's silly to be stingy with compliments. If you see someone and they strike you as beautiful in any way, why not let them know?

I've always been a firm believer that soul music never dies. The artists we still listen to today, years after their music was first heard are mostly soul artists; Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Chaka Khan. We still sing along to all of them with our hearts.

You owe it to yourself to live beautifully. And I am.

To be a queen of a household is a powerful thing.

I could float in the pool for hours, just letting the water carry me.

I'm being all of me, and it feels stupendous. I don't want to leave this feeling.

Sometimes I felt as a writer I was purging, and it almost hurt to purge to that level. Now it doesn't feel that way, maybe because I'm older. Maybe life has given me some punches, but it didn't knock me down.

The highs, the lows, the peaks, the valleys, whatever, it's all going to go into the art, whether I'm singing or acting or whatever.

There's a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It's the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college.

The video for 'Whatever' is kind of a documentary in a way. It's showing that love can last. Not just in your early 20s or your late 30s, but in your 50s, 60s and 70s. There's an awful myth out there that when you get married, love and lovemaking fade. It's not true.

Heartbreak was the impetus to me writing poems and music in the first place. Over the years, I had my heart broken so badly that if I didn't find a way to get all the pain out, I was going to lose my mind. I was crazy! Like, wanting to slash tires and smash car windows. Crazy! I was so hurt that I had to write.

A woman is more than the sum of her parts.

There are black marriages that are still going strong 40 years later. You hear so many myths that there aren't any people making it, but there are. As long as there are some, there's hope.

Back in my mid-20s I was told I'd never be able to have children as I wasn't having periods. Doctors tried to start up my monthly cycles, but when nothing worked, they actually offered me a hysterectomy. Without it, they said I might get ovarian cancer in the future. I chose not to have the operation, and am so glad I didn't.

I've always enjoyed shows like 'The X-Files,' where you're on the edge of your seat and you're so invested in these characters.

My mother's a genius. She just kept feeding me art on whatever we had; paper plates, silver platter, didn't matter. You know, she just kept feeding it to me. So we went to see all kinds of theater. We would go to the art museum pretty much every Sunday, and I would watch her. She let me know that art was supposed to touch.

We all get angry and jealous sometimes, none of us is perfect, but we should not try to be different.

I'm going to keep it real gully with you; the first two months, I wanted to give him back. I expected someone to come and save me because after you have the baby, nobody cares about you anymore. Nobody cares if you sleep, nobody cares if you eat. It's just you and this all-consuming thingy!

Everything starts with writing. I heard Nikki Giovanni and was blown away. I just thought 'wow'; she was writing from a black girl's perspective, and the imagery was so vivid that I started doing spoken word.