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.

As I am a poet I express what I believe, and I fight against whatever I oppose, in poetry.

A democratic state is not proven by the welfare of the strong but by the welfare of the weak.

If any of us hopes to survive, she must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.

I care because I want you to care about me. I care because I have become aware of my absolute dependency upon you, whoever you are, for the outcome of my social, my democratic experience.

I believe that love is the single, true prosperity of any moment.

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.