Аrt movements are always linked to some kind of turmoil.

It's hard for black women to ask for help. We think we don't need it. We're used to being in pain and living with it.

I think sometimes the stars align whether we want them to or not. And we're drawn to certain people and places for no other reason than...Destiny.

I think that we need to make it our goal to define freedom for ourselves.

We kind of have to rewrite our own stories and our own ways of being free.

We can look at history and see that [political turmoil is] fertile ground for art.

Sometimes I feel as though I'm trying to take a hit for the team so that other people then can move forward. I'm like, "Look, I just laid out all of my stuff, so what's the worst that can happen?".

In my experience when I do try to avoid something, it makes its way into the work anyway. To be in front of it and just make friends with it is easier for me.

I really hope that people feel permission to talk about their own troubles, but also to celebrate themselves.

Sometimes it's just rejecting stereotypes, sometimes it's creating work. Sometimes it's just blocking out the noise.

I also think that [political turmoil] gives artists something, a way of kind of processing.

People read books to escape the uncertainties of life.

In life your expectations and disappointments are directly linked. So too is your heartfulness and your contentedness

Why is such a bad thing to die?

Bulls do not win bull fights. People do.

Winter is the night of vegetation.

Of all the arts the living of a life is perhaps the greatest; to live every moment of life with the same imaginative commitment as the poet brings to a special field.

...a young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity.

There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press

A fish probably has no means of apprehending the existence of water; it is too deeply immersed in it.

Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.