No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand and lie about who you actually are.

The forest is the first cathedral. I felt that from the time I was a child. I credit my mother with that. I used to think it came from her Native-American side. Whichever it was, she instinctively connected with nature, and taught me that.

My parents taught me service - not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

I'm sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.