[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality . . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns.

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.

I believe it's true that one person can make a difference. But how much more difference 100 people make, or rather 99.

We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.

This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth.

As well have a talon as a finger, a muzzle as a mouth, as well have a hollow as a heart.

Your presence was shore where I rested/ released from the hoodoo of that dance, where I spoke/ with my true voice again.

Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shinning

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fire blazes. No one ever thanked him.

It seemed to me as we were talking about Christ rising from the dead, the sun popped over the mountain. That was indicative of Christ rising - a new day. It just makes sense.

The answer to most prayers is no.

You cannot perform acts of evil in the name of a greater good, because the good suffers. It is corrupted by what has been done in its name.

In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school, two years at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies.

I think Donald Trump would be a horrible President.

What a leader learns after you've learned it all counts most of all.

There is no power in your name or my name, but there is awesome power in the name of Jesus because of everything he represents.

Harder than training for the Olympics, harder than graduating from college, has been to stay a virgin before marriage.

I am teaching you to live simply. To live with an idea is a very complicated living, it is cunning. To live simply, just like trees and birds.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle in destroying white supremacy is the hatred and hostility that Africans have for each other.

When I was twenty I was in love with words, a wordsmith. I didn't know enough to know when people were letting words get in their way. Now I like the words to disappear, like a transparent curtain.