“I don’t like the idea of the black race being diluted out of existence. I like the idea of all of us being here.”

Exhaust the little moment soon it dies.

As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.

Life must be aromatic. There must be scent, somehow there must be some.

Each body has its art.

With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.

Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.

One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

Poetry is life distilled.

Reading is important – read between the lines. Don’t swallow everything.

Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.

I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.

All in all it was my intention to hold both the black and the white clientele by voicing the different kinds of songs in their customary tongues.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

Water from the white fountain didn’t taste any better than from the black fountain.

I don’t think it serves any minority or underrepresented group to be coddled. Because the world won’t coddle you. So I actually believe in tough love, hard truths, black and white.

This song ain’t black or white and as far as I know it don’t infringe on anyone’s copyright.

Black history won’t stop no bullets.

Did you see the 2000 Republican Presidential Convention? The last time the Republicans had that many Black people on a stage, they were selling them!

When I was young, I loved black men.