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

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie.

I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest.

And who will join this standing up and the ones who stood without sweet company will sing and sing back into the mountains and if necessary even under the sea: we are the ones we have been waiting for.

The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.

There is a man who exists as one of the most popular objects of leadership, legislation, and quasi-literature in the history of all men. . . . This man, that object of attention, attack, and vast activity, cannot make himself be heard, let alone understood. He has never been listened to. . . . That man is Black and alive in white America where the media of communication do not allow the delivery of his own voice, his own desires, his own rage.