Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader - or any person - in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

You can't truly have an open heart until it's been broken.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

I'm where I need to be, so my heart is light. Whatever happens, I know - I mean, I feel - that this is absolutely where I should be and I've lived up to my own expectations.

This could be our revolution: to love what is plentiful as much as what's scarce.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.