The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.

I have a rendezvous with life.

Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed. And find another lover.

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

We were not made to eternally weep.