I lost relatives to AIDS, a couple of my closest cousins. I lost friends to AIDS, high-school friends who never even made it to their 21st birthdays in the '80s. When it's that close to you, you can't really deny it, and you can't run from it.
“You can't be what you don't see. I didn't think about being a doctor. I didn't even think about being a clerk in a store, I'd never seen a black clerk in a clothing store.”
“The task is to investigate speech sounds in relation to the meanings with which they are invested, i.e., sounds viewed as signifiers, and above all to throw light on the structure of the relation between sounds and meaning.”