BARACK OBAMA - DREAMS FROM MY FATHER

"Of course it hurt," he said, taking a sip from the jug. "Sometimes you can't worry about hurt. Sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to go."

To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to hear.

"The change comes later. In about five years, although it seems like it's coming sooner all the time."
"What change is that?"
"When their eyes stop laughing. Their throats can still make the sound, but if you look at their eyes, you can see they've shut off something inside."

Literature: Tillich and Niebuhr

The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power--and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.
But that's not all law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.