Africa? A book one thumbs Listlessly, till slumber comes.

The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?

We shall not always plant while others reap

The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

We were not made to eternally weep.

Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me.

Culture is the best society has to offer...How can we pass on civilization to those who do not value civilization. (Terrence Rattigan)

Music is the space between the notes as much as the notes themselves

The Sun has no chance to be nobody and that is the punishment for being a sun! If you can be nobody just like a humble tree in a silent forest, you can find the happiness too!

I am not morally obligated to care more for a man than he cares for himself.

It's always important to take time to study men -- important men. Friends and enemies.

To teach is to learn twice. About all some parents accomplish in life is to send a child to Harvard. The purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place to spend one's leisure.

Why is it that there is this misconception that dark equals good. That only applies to chocolate.

The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles.

Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.

Time is a river rolling into nowhere. We must live while we can, and we'll drink our cup of laughter.