Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black.

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.

Joblessness gives you unlimited access to wealth

I warned you I like to play games.

But space shrinks when you get old, and things lose their wonder, and the wisest thing to do then is to try your best to sleep.

Rise up to wise up.

No queen has had to fight an insurrection in half a millennium. And she takes it personally. But it was her fate to be a good queen that followed four poor ones

So, one way or another, I found myself in a few movies. I take it seriously when I'm on the set, but I don't take myself seriously as an actor.

In the old days, that was my ad-lib for hecklers in the joints I worked. It stuck with me. I hardly say it now, say, to fans, even though people do send me hockey pucks.

We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.

Any fear is an illusion. You think something is standing in your way, but nothing is really there. What is there is an opportunity to do your best and gain some success.

There's a million reasons why I should give you up. But the heart wants what it wants.