Americans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were the favored model minority over Asian Americans.

I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

Revive soul, Renew spirit.

Darkness, that is, ignorance, limits our visibility.

No matter what I do now, there are certain doors I have already closed, certain opportunities I'll never get back. There's nothing to be done, I guess. It is what it is.

It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of.

Let me tell you that every misery I miss is a new blessing. [Not only be grateful for the good that you have but also for the bad you don't!]

The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.

Facts do not give advice.

Poetry is itself a thing of God; He made his prophets poets; and the more We feel of poesie do we become Like God in love and power,-under-makers.

I'm really normal. I play football, go to the beach, drive. We have dogs. I can imagine people calling me a character, but I'm Joe Straight.

One must obey the man whom the city sets up in power in small things and in justice and in its opposite.