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

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.

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

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.

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

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.