I really hope that people feel permission to talk about their own troubles, but also to celebrate themselves.

It's hard for black women to ask for help. We think we don't need it. We're used to being in pain and living with it.

I think sometimes the stars align whether we want them to or not. And we're drawn to certain people and places for no other reason than...Destiny.

I think that we need to make it our goal to define freedom for ourselves.

We kind of have to rewrite our own stories and our own ways of being free.

We can look at history and see that [political turmoil is] fertile ground for art.

Sometimes I feel as though I'm trying to take a hit for the team so that other people then can move forward. I'm like, "Look, I just laid out all of my stuff, so what's the worst that can happen?".

In my experience when I do try to avoid something, it makes its way into the work anyway. To be in front of it and just make friends with it is easier for me.

Аrt movements are always linked to some kind of turmoil.

Sometimes it's just rejecting stereotypes, sometimes it's creating work. Sometimes it's just blocking out the noise.

I also think that [political turmoil] gives artists something, a way of kind of processing.

She died without us by her side, and now, we are left with the scars. In time, they will fade, but their haunting memory will remain.

...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear

You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.

I have ideas written down some places, but usually I can't find them. I'm not very organized.

Fighting is about knowledge, knowledge is a very important part of it.

I was relying on a kind of natural transition - the transitions made by someone who is slightly deranged.

A [psychological] difficulty is not an impossibility.

All men love to talk about themselves, even the ones who are completely buggers.

Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.

The proprietor, producing neither by his own labor nor by his implement, and receiving products in exchange for nothing, is either a parasite or a thief.