I shall create! If not a note, a hole./If not an overture, a desecration.

Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.

Writing is a delicious agony.

When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.

I don't like the idea of the black race being diluted out of existence. I like the idea of all of us being here.

Live not for Battles Won. Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.

I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry. ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to words, and that words can do wonderful things, and it's too bad to just let them lie there without doing anything with and for them.