I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.

She was afraid to suggest to him that to most people, nothing "happens." That most people merely live from day to day until they die. That, after he had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. That there might even come a year when no one on earth would think of him at all.

It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction.

I've always thought of myself as a reporter.

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.

No man can give me any word but Wait.

Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.