“I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we’re here and we’re healthy.”

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.

The music is in minors.

A little jealousy in a relationship is healthy. It’s always nice to know someone is afraid to lose you.

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos – the trees, the clouds, everything.

I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health.

If you want to be more alive, love is the truest health.

Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.

An educated, enlightened & informed population is one of the surest ways of promoting the health of a democracy.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care.

To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start.