“The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature.”

To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.

Character and fate are two words for the same thing.

The artist stands on the human being as a statue does on a pedestal.

We are more closely connected to the invisible than to the visible.

Nature is an aeolian harp, a musical instrument whose tones are the re-echo of higher strings within us.

There is an energy which springs from sickness and debility: it has a more powerful effect than the real, but, sadly, expires in an even greater infirmity.

A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.

If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.

Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.

You are alone with everything you love.

One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand.

A God-intoxicated man.

The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.

In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.

We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.

Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.

It’s been raining outside and I feel like a sad poet, hating my imagination pissing on the roof.

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it’s this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.

I love Black poets. I love that as a Black girl, I get to participate in that legacy. So that’s Yusef Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, Phillis Wheatley.

You don’t have to be a poet, you don’t have to be a politician or be in the White House to make an impact with your words. We all have this capacity to find solutions for the future.

Poetry is – it’s an art form, but, to me, it’s also a weapon, it’s also an instrument. It’s the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that’s a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.

It wasn’t until I was named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. in high school though that I officially began calling myself a poet. I just always loved writing, period.

As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.