“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.”

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.

I dream a world… where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!

We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.

Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.

Out of love, No regrets– Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets– Though the return Be never.

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.

Life dosent frighten me at all.

I stay cool, and dig all jive, That’s the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.

Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.

Everything there is but lovin’ leaves a rust on your old soul.

Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.

Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.

Why are we told to be afraid to hurt? Why do we avoid, run and hide? Cover up inside with shields of armor, Our shins, and elbows made of pads of plastic; We are not made of glass and tattered bits, It’s not weakness when our strength builds us to last.

I’m afraid someday my words will run out so I spend every waking moment trying to capture the human experience in purple prose.

I’m not afraid of the chance at loving you, I’m only afraid of what it could do to me.

Frightened people become angry people – as history teaches us again and again.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

The moon is alive because of the darkness how could we – ever be afraid of something that gives the stars a home?

The more you know her the more it scares yet it makes you wish you knew her more.

I didn’t ask because I was afraid of the answer.