From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.

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.

If your treated like a puppet find a new ball of string

Consider your actions and words. Be thoughtful when expressing your feelings or concerns. Sometimes it's not what you say, but the way you say it. That makes all the difference

Find 100 reasons to laugh. You are bound to feel better, you will cope with problems more effectively and people will enjoy being around you. Besides unhappiness, what do you have to lose?

I would continue to do the things that I do. I'd get into the field and work, and be an example to other people that you can't rely on the government to be the answer to everything.

I'm tired. I'm going back to bed.

Unless you change how you are, you will always have what you've got.

Barack Obama is one of the greatest politicians in American history.

I have lived in the monster and I know its insides; and my sling is the sling of David.

In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams.

Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of.