I know I’m lucky to have my sign to tote downtown every morning. Two mornings ago I found myself grinning to myself as I was walking up the stairs out of the subway with my sign under my arm to go hold it again. I believe in the sentence on the sign. I’ll stand by the period not a question mark. This morning a guy my age who taught forever in the city schools stopped to talk. Later a younger guy who works in the building for the Dept. of Education stopped to gush about the sign’s message. I didn’t get five hours sleep last night because the shoulder keeps me on my back which doesn’t work for me. It’s that way every night now. Some mornings when the phone’s alarm goes off at 6:00 I lie there and think about maybe not going downtown with the sign that morning. But I always go. 

’As always, one of her books was next to her.’
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

‘I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty - to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom...The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired.’
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass