“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.”

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.

I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.

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

I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.

It is brave to be involved.

Sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.

Shades of black intertwined in my being I try to see in color but darkness is all I’m seeing.

I can adapt to any environment or any situation I need to, so I am ready to go to Russia. You take what you get or start crying about it, but I am re-doing ‘Rocky IV.’ I am doing the black ‘Rocky.’

As blacks, all we got is sports and entertainment. That’s the only way out the hood sometimes.

I believe every pencil has to be sharpened every now and then to stay sharp, or you dull out. So my records, I chose to speak on what black people do, what white people do, what women do, what men do.

I found my old diary tonight. A brokenness I had forgotten pen pressured so deep it punctured page. I ran my fingers over my words and there inside ridges black I found a little girl desperate for someone to save her, desperate for the very woman I have become.

I can’t have brown hair for some reason. I don’t think it goes with my skin tone. The second I see it turn brown in the sun, I dye it black – the blacker the better.

Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me. Since then, I have taken pills for depression.

He could only give her a world in black and white. And all she wanted was a life of color.