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.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

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

beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.

One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

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 know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.