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

My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.

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.

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.

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!

I like to think that I’ve gotten better at what I do. I spend more time and pay more attention to detail album after album. But pretty much it’s stayed the same.

In order to find reality, each must search for his own universe, look for the details that contribute to this reality7 that one feels under the surface of things.

Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.

During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set.

He was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.

Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.

For me, there’s a fine line between telling a story that’s fictional with lots of details and then removing yourself too much from it, so it’s bloodless, a little too fictional.

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.