It was the day after Thanksgiving. I was the 3 p.m. backwaiter, but the trains were running irregularly, and while I had heard one sighing into the station as I ran down the stairs, my card was out of money. Which is to say, I was late.

[Mandela] subsequently used words that never left me: 'Because you hold a particular position, doesn't mean that you are more important that anyone else. Your time is not more valuable that anybody else's time. If you are late you show that you have no respect for another person's time and therefore no respect for other people because you consider yourself to be more important.

All my life, he said, I been witness to people showin up where they was supposed to be at various times after they'd said they'd be there. I never heard one yet that didnt have a reason for it.Yessir.But there aint but one reason.Yessir.You know what it is?No sir.It's that their word's no good. That's the only reason there ever was or ever will be.