“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.”

Be yourself. Don’t imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.

She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.

It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.

Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.

I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.

Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.

It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.

When I start writing a poem, I don’t think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.

To be in love Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.

Beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.

Writing is a delicious agony.

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.

Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.

People will never, ever forget what happened and how it happened, and it is my hope that we are on our way to greater change.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

Too many of us still believe our differences define us.

I have spent over half my life teaching love and brotherhood, and I feel that it is better to continue to try to teach or live equality and love than it would be to have hatred or prejudice.

People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn’t stop you from having your own opinion.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

I’m not a handsome guy, but I can give my hand to someone who needs help. Beauty is in the heart, not in the face.

Say something. Have the courage. Have the backbone. Get in the way. Walk with the wind. It’s all going to work out.