I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.

I prioritize my creative pleasure. I enjoy expressing my artistic side and receive the gifts of doing so.

It takes a week to write a book, but it takes years to write a good one.

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.

We are prepared for some things, and we receive just as fast as we prepare ourselves.

The God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers.

I'll protect you. I'll stand by you if anything happens.

It is clear that there would nothing a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Syria because Syria is Russia's ally, and Russia has a veto in the U.N. Security Council.

Counting the ways the Book of Mormon brings peace to the soul is like counting the sand on the seashore.

He sendeth sun, he sendeth shower, Alike they're needed to the flower; And joys and tears alike are sent To give the soul its nourishment.

The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.