“Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.”

Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.

Money and art are far apart.

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed – Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.

Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

A dog gets lonesome just like a human. He wants to associate with other dogs, but when they take him out, the poor dog is on a leash and cannot run around.

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven.

I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.

If being crazy means living life as if it matters, then I don’t mind being completely insane.

The husband provides direction; the wife, maintenance.

Consider God’s charity. Where else have we ever seen someone who has been offended voluntarily paying out his life for those who have offended him?

What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.

Your work life is divided into two distinct areas – what matters most and everything else. You will have to take what matters to the extremes and be okay with what happens to the rest. Professional success requires it.

Government funding that’s coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world. It’s really palpable – it’s making a huge difference saving lives.

When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.

Until death it is all life.