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

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.

The music is in minors.

No man can give me any word but Wait.

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.

Man is an imitative creature.

Art imitates life and, sometimes, life imitates art. It’s a weird combination of elements.

You know what I hate the most? People that imitate owls.

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?

We’re the leaders. Look around. Everything we do, we’re gonna see everyone else try to do it.

The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.

If you see somebody dressing like me, you know they’re purposely trying to dress like me because I dress like nothing.

Me, I’m trying to sound like me. I don’t be trying to sound like somebody.