If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?

We shall not always plant while others reap

The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

We were not made to eternally weep.

Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me.

For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.

Make life as a lifelong love affair with yourself.

Every great achiever is inspired by a great mentor.

The practice of Detachment encourages the positive aspects of your life to become dominant, while providing a clear path for the negative aspects to recede.

When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.

Relax, refresh and revive your soul, spirit and body.

Alternately in our lives come black and white.Nothing is visible through the silent dark hole:no light, no life, no meandering respitein the tunnel of death, journeys the eternal soul.

Some people are ok with doing nothing all day after they retire, but then some people if they had nothing to do would go mad and start banging their heads against a wall. .

Nothing will divert me from my purpose.

I'm passionate about stories that have humanity, compassion and humor.

Tell them it was a foul.