Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the '60s: Independent fire!

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.

When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.

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

There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man's shirt on its morning run.

Writing is a delicious agony.