I believe in racial memory too. I'm sure I've got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what I am.

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.

God created all people.

It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important.

The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.

How did you do that?” Mr. Poe asked. “Nice girls shouldn’t know how to do such things.” “My sister is a nice girl,” Klaus said, “and she knows how to do all sorts of things.

Fashion is a mysterious energy, a visual moment-impossible to predict where it goes.

I still lack to a considerable degree that naturally superior kind of manner that I would dearly like to possess.

North Americans have a peculiar bias. They go outside to be alone and they go home to be social.

The vices of youth now exceed my powers, but not my fancy.

In the end, it only comes down to one thing: choosing the one you can’t live without.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood.