“I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn’t, So I jumped in and sank.”

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.

Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.

Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

Folks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!

When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.

The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it.

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop–you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro – and beautiful!

Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.

Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I’m still pulling.

I enjoy the risk of bungee-jumping. I used to pay money to do it. Now, it’s the opposite. I get paid to do action.

Today, we jump into this globalization of the economy and the internet age.

It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be consumed by it.

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.

When I started my first film, there were three women directors in France. Their films were OK, but I was different. It’s like when you start to jump and you put the pole very high – you have to jump very high. I thought, I have to use cinema as a language.

Sadness isn’t sadness. It’s happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They’re balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It’s life that’s jumped off a tall cliff.

When a man jumps out of a ten-story building.

the creativity starts to make other people want to jump in, and then a lot of people get employed.