To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify. And we will have to allow them the choice, without fear of death: that they may come and do likewise or that they may come and that we will follow them, that a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.

In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.

... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchings for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other.

It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

Sometimes we become so sophisticated we have to read the New York Times in order to figure out whether it's a hot or a rainy day.

There are two ways to worry words. One is hoping for the greatest possible beauty in what is created. The other is to tell the truth.