All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for whatthey become.

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.

A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.

You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms.