Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

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.

If we deny the thirst of love, we stand to lose the last known address of the stranger whithin us.

It's said that we can all choose our own destiny. But sometimes, for a special few, destiny has no choice but to choose for you.

What do you want?” Boyd whispered.“You—

My wife was saying to me just the other day how she's noticed a spring in my step lately. That was because I thought you were gone forever.' 'I missed you too, Thurid.

It's beautiful when you watch something good happen to somebody when it's well deserved.

Talking wisely to the ignorant is throwing precious seeds to the desert sands!

Have courage, be capable of loving.... Be happy in love. Be joyful in victory. Follow the dictates of your heart.

If we'd had another carefree 70s, I'd have been dead. It was a little too carefree, you know? I don't know how carefree they were for me, I think I was worried then, I can't remember what about.

Women systematically underestimate their own abilities.

The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverance can restrain violence - reverance for human life and the environment.