By the time I was eight I was taking classical piano lessons and I wanted to be a concert pianist. But that didn't work out. I graduated from high school and my formal education ended.

You've got to learn to leave the table When love's no longer being served".

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.

Life is short. People are not easy to know. They're not easy to know, so if you don't tell them how you feel, you're not going to get anywhere, I feel.

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it

There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.

In knowledge there is strength, in understanding there is might, and in wisdom there is power.

Faith in oneself... is the best and safest course.

The telephone and visitors are the work destroyers.

You know who would make an interesting murder-suicide? Madeline Albright and Yanni.

In a post-Christian, skeptical age, love on display is the most convincing apologetic.

I train a lot of people on the side as a personal trainer, but I still work out myself to keep in great shape.

Do your kids a favor - don't have any.

Whoever lives among many evils just as I, how can dying not be a source of gain?

Men have not stacked the decks against women.

I sat on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away.