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?

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.

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.

Happiness has to do with your mindset, not with outside circumstance.

The skyScorched by the sun, WeepsFecund tears.

Judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.

I had yet to be a mother, but I would have thought it difficult to forget something it took thirty-seven hours of excruciating pain to push out from between my legs ~Charley Davidson

I have a great, great body.

We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows.

We might all place ourselves in one of two ranks the women who do something, and the women who do nothing; the first being of course the only creditable place to occupy.

When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.

Legacy is what a president does that affects later generations.

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.