You must run around like a crazy person or walk sedately honoring the dead.

Not everyone's life is what they make it. Some people's life is what other people make it.

Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss.

I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

I am not interested in being a role model, or in fulfilling the expectations of others. I know I am of most use to others and to myself by being this unique self: Nature, I have noticed, is not particularly devoted to copies, and human beings needn't be either.

All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers. Girl, child ain't safe in a family of men, but I ain't never thought I had to fight in my own house. I loves Harpo. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.