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.

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

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.

The true republic: men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less.

Blame me not for my mistakes, for that's common, but surely do for my achievements which I'm equally unaware of.

With best thoughts, words and actions we align our past, present and future.

If you want to know what an ultimate goal would be, of course it would be utter peace.

No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.

Somehow I think it was declared very early on that I was the - if not the black sheep of the family, not a very good student.

I'm not like Woody Allen like, "Oh my god what's going to happen? Ooh Ooh Oohhh." I'm just high-strung. So I do need to do a lot of stuff.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

Love does not to be understood. It needs only to be shown.