But On The Other Hand, I Don't

If You Dedicate Your Attention To Discipline In Your Life You Become Smarter.

One Of The Things I Have Tried To Do With This Book And With All Of Them Really Is Avoid That Simple, Easy, Reductionist View Of Motivation And To Show We Do Things For A Complex Net Of Reasons, A Real Braid Of Reasons.

I Am Aware Of The Changes, But In No Sense Am I Believer That We Live In A Post-racial Society. That's A Description Of Our Inheritance And That Is Theirs, Which Is Inescapable. It Is Doesn't Matter If You Are From New England Or Mississippi. You're An American. It Doesn't Matter If You Are White, Black, Brown, Or Asian. It Is Part Of American Society. You'd Have To Be Blind, Deaf, Or Dumb Not To Know It. The Emphasis On Color Or The Fear Of It, Is All Part Of The Same Dark Flower. I Am Trying To Point To That And To Bring It All The Way Back From Senegal.

The Issue Of Torture, Connected To American Soldiers, Is Not Somewhere Most People Want To Linger. We May Not Want To Confront This Issue So Much In The U.s. Because Of How We Want To Think About Our Veterans. There's The Sense That We Want To Think Of Our Veterans As - If They're Damaged, Damaged By Something Glamorous, Like A Firefight.

Driving Home, It's All I Can Do To Keep From Crying. Time's Come, Time's Gone, Time's Never Returning, I Say To Myself. What's Here In Front Of Me Is All I've Got, I Decide, And As I Drive My Car Through The Blowing Snow It Doesn't Seem Like Much, Except For The Kindness That I've Just Exchanged With An Old Lady, So I Concentrate On That.