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

For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.

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

The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

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.

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.