“The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the ’60s: Independent fire!”

We don’t ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.

When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you’re telling them that they’re less than somebody else.

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise.

Don’t let anyone call you a minority if you’re black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You’re not less than anybody else.

What I’m fighting for now in my work… for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.

We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

The poetry is myself.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

And if sun comes how shall we greet him? shall we not dread him, shall we not fear him after so lengthy a session with shade?

This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

People are so in need, in need of help. People want so much that they do not know.

I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.

I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.

There are no magics or elves or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must wizard a track through our own screaming weed.

As the sun shines both on the cedar and the smallest flower, so the Divine sun illumines each soul.

We may speak of love and humility as the true flowers of spiritual growth; and they give off a wonderful scent, which benefits all those who come near.

She’s got all the wildflower energy in her veins.

In search of my Love I will go over mountains and strands; I will gather no flowers, I will fear no wild beasts; And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.

Happiness is within you… so unlock the chains from your heart and let yourself grow- like the sweet flower you are. I know the answer- just spread your wings and set yourself free.

The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of it’s scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.