It's a good time for black people to be alive.

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.

Whatever yerz’re lookin’ for, I hope yerz find it. Yerz moight’ve never lost it!

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.

It's only awkward if you let it be.

Too much is unwholesome.

I'll just take amusement at being a paradox.

Loose ladies on the road will drive you crazy, every no, becomes a maybe.

Let him who is not come to logic be plagued with continuous and everlasting filth

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

You need never fear feeling too good about God.

I'm around my kids every day. I'm regular. We're a regular family. My wife cooks, she washes clothes, I read books, I pump my own gas, I get my own hair cut.