American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Recognizing a problem doesn't always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.

This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.