“…and I have to know that the brute, the bigot and the batterer are all children of God–whether they know it or not–and I’m supposed to treat them accordingly. It’s hard and I blow it all the time. I’d like everybody to think of a statement by Terrence. The statement is, ‘I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.’ If you can internalize at least a portion of that, you will never be able to say of an act, a criminal act, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that.’ No matter how heinous the crime. If a human being did it, you have to say, ‘I have in me all the components that are in her or in him. I intend to use all of my energies constructively as opposed to destructively.’ If you can do that about the negative, just think what you can do about the positive.”

-Maya Angelou