A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.

A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.

Poetry is a sequence of dots and dashes, spelling depths, crypts, cross-lights, and moon wisps.

I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision.

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay.