“Genius gives birth, talent delivers.”

Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

Everything I wrote was true because I believed what I saw.

Something great is about to happen to me: I’m about to love somebody very much.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?

You are the equal of the idol who has given you your inspiration.

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

When you start separating people from their rivers, what have you got? Bureaucracy!

I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.

While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light.

There’s wisdom in wine.

Pain or love or danger makes you real again.

Life must be rich and full of loving–it’s no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.

The beauty of things must be that they end.

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.

Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.

You deserve to be a happy person you were born to be.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

The day I was born songs were on records, phones were tied down, computers needed rooms and the web was fiction. Change the world. You can.

I want every young man who sees me to know that I’m not that different from them. I wasn’t born into wealth. I wasn’t born into fame. I made a lot of mistakes – but I kept at it.

You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.

Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.