Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

So revenge is obviously a deeply messed-up expression of vindictiveness. It is hard to even call it "evil." It is just plain insanity. A result of deeply messed-up thinking.

Create in me a clean heart O God.

In my imagination yes, I remember, when I was six years old, I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it's real.

There was no reason for a revolution in Paraguay.

Let's embrace more of life, not less. Balanced people don't change the world, and I'd rather spend my time feeling worn out from meaningful activities and projects.

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history...They all made mistakes. Of course they did. They're human! Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves and each other.

Things are done according to money these days.

What is love? As far as I can tell, it is passion, admiration and respect. If you have two, you have enough. If you have all three, you don't have to die to go to heaven.