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

What, what am I to do with all of this life?

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.

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.

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.

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it.

My works are an imitation of my own past and present.

To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

We wouldn’t want to be like the Swiss, would we? That would be awful! We’d be rich!

He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.

If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

Theres two kinds of music: black soul music, and the white imitation thereof.