How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

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.

Time is the first currency for success and one we all hold in common.

Being different is a revolving door in your life where secure people enter and insecure exit.

Does he know I can never feel anything for anyone ever again?

Your choices are your only freedom.

They know too well the violent hypnosis of those who hope to possess them-- men who can smell the blood on the places where a woman is breaking.

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough.

And we just went with Julie because that name hadn't been used in any other popular songs at the time.

The only thing worth stealing is a kiss from a sleeping child.

Actually I dance really well on the floor.

People suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is impossible for a person to be cheated by anyone but himself.