“Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind...” — Michelle Alexander Quote

“Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again, once you've been branded a felon.”

“On any given day, there's always something I'd rather be doing than facing the ugly, racist underbelly of America.”

“The great gift of 'Incarceration Nations' is that, by introducing a wide range of approaches to crime, punishment, and questions of justice in diverse countries - Rwanda, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, Australia and Norway - it forces us to face the reality that American-style punishment has been chosen.”

“If I had killed Crow off I can think of least six novels I would never have written, 400,000 words' worth of very necessary experience.”

“I went from an unemployed actor's life to doing stand-up comedy, and that was fortuitous. It's not the usual way the crow flies, going from being in a TV sketch show to playing one of Shakespeare's finest characters, but, hey, that's the way it has happened.”

“I was raised by people who, like my father, came out of the Jim Crow South because Michigan was the place that people immigrated to from all over the world to have economic opportunity.”