“I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn’t, So I jumped in and sank.”

The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.

There is no color line in art.

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

Road’s in front o’ me, Nothin’ to do but walk.

I’m so tired of waiting, aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.

I love swimming in rivers, and well remember once jumping in at Chiswick.

Boys are found everywhere – on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running around or jumping to.

Eliminate the referees, raise the basket four feet, double the size of the basketball, limit the height of the players to 5 feet 9 inches, bring back the centre jump, allow taxi drivers in for free and allow the players to carry guns.

I enjoy the risk of bungee-jumping. I used to pay money to do it. Now, it’s the opposite. I get paid to do action.

Today, we jump into this globalization of the economy and the internet age.

It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be consumed by it.

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.

When I started my first film, there were three women directors in France. Their films were OK, but I was different. It’s like when you start to jump and you put the pole very high – you have to jump very high. I thought, I have to use cinema as a language.