The civil rights situation is like a pregnancy. It will get worse, I believe, before it gets better. What the usual pregnancy comes to is a decent baby. That is what we all hope will be the end product of this stress. It is customary, at the end of a pregnancy, to have for your pains a decent baby.

People like definite decisions, / Tidy answers, all the little ravelings / Snipped off, the lint removed, they / Hop happily among their roughs / Calling what they can't clutch insanity / Or saintliness.

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.

at a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on FIRE to leave: I have a leaving-FIT.

Don't let anyone call you a minority if you're black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You're not less than anybody else.

We are each other's magnitude and bond.

With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.