If we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children's mastery over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative, and involved lives.

I've been a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNICEF and the UNICEF family for more than twelve years.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

I'm a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

I've always been able to make choices that don't embarrass me.

I try to find hope in struggle and resistance in small places as much as I can.

I was able to do To Sleep with Anger, a very powerful film about African Americans, their spirituality, and the things that happened within a small community and a family.

One of the main purveyors of violence in this world has been this country.

New Orleans is a city whose basic industry is the service industry. That's why it makes its money. That's - it brings people to the city. People come to the city and experience the wonders of this extraordinary city and everything else. The question is that, how do we create jobs which are the jobs that have pay, that - living wages?

In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play.

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

But I think it's very key that there's a plan for Haiti. And we have to begin to - as progressives and people who are concerned about Haiti and have been concerned about Haiti, we have to begin to build some sort of consensus, a movement around the Haiti that the Haitians envision.

Well I don't know because I don't have a real relationship with the industry.

Every day of my life I walk with the idea that I am black, no matter how successful I am. And our success is tempered by that; you're successful in this way given the fact you are black, and most blacks don't get to that point.

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

The progressive movement against the war of occupation in Iraq is a reason for hope, as is resistance to free trade agreements in Latin America. Those are moments that we have to celebrate: that people still find the resolve and energy to resist.

What happened to Haiti is a threat that could happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know, because of global warming, because of climate change and all this.

Every day of my life I walk with the idea I am black no matter how successful I am.

You know, we do not want the militarization of Haiti. We do not see a Haitian as a protectorate where it relinquishes its own sovereignty.

It's also important for those who promote those issues within the white community - the somewhat privileged community - to talk about issues affecting people of color.

If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.

I'm not so vain as to believe that my involvement changes anything whatsoever.

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.

If we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children's mastery over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative, and involved lives.

We have to be that wedge that drives the question and asks the hard questions.

I was able to do The Saint of Fort Washington, on the relationship between two homeless men.

Some of these things I saw in foreign films - African films, Cuban films - long before I decided to really go on this course as an actor. I started to think about what values I saw in those films that I wanted to bring to my projects.

But rarely have I made choices that made me feel I was really compromising what I believe.

I never thought about being an actor.

When you've moved past a point where you're just scrambling for jobs, you think about the things that you want to do. And the things that you want to do are governed by what you've seen, what you choose to embrace.

Corporate partners help UNICEF fund our programmes for children, advocate with us on their behalf, or facilitate our work through logistical, technical, research or supply support.

Bambi has a profound effect on children because it's about losing your mother.

I love children and I love men, but I can't commit to either for the rest of my life.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.

I'm not up on today's television for children, because it's mostly cartoons that don't seem to interest me.

When I see children, I see the face of God. That's why I love them so much. That's what I see.

We have three cats. It's like having children, but there is no tuition involved.

Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

I believe very firmly that gay people of every stripe and age should be role models for all children, and that means interacting with them.

In fact I have nightmares about having children. I want to carry a baby and feel the life within me and in my dream, I do. But every time after it's born, there's this incredible fear, this pounding pulse of fear. It's a real bad nightmare.

When you are getting ready to become a mom, being in love with someone just isn't enough. You need to think about whether he would be a good parent and raise your children with similar beliefs.

The real question isn't whether you love your kids or not, but how well you are able to demonstrate your love and caring so that your children really feel loved.

I am glad that I do not have any children.