we are the ones we have been waiting for

I realized I was a country person - I'm just not used to small spaces.

Eventually I knew what hair wanted; it wanted to be itself ... to be left alone by anyone, including me, who did not love it as it was.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself, actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something, no maybe junior and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

Many people are aware that we are in peril and that there is no trustworthy leadership.

America is America. It's a capitalist system. They [leaders] have enshrined that belief that profit matters more than anything else. The polarization of the society is just the resurfacing of that.

People who work hard often work too hard. ... May we learn to honor the hammock, the siesta, the nap and the pause in all its forms.