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

We need everybody and all that we are. We need to know and make known the complete, constantly unfolding, complicated heritage that is our black experience. We should absolutely resist the superstar, one at a time mentality that threatens the varied and resilient, flexible wealth of our Black future.

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think

Like running trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying.

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 neglected legacy of the Sixties is just this: unabashed moral certitude, and the purity -- the incredibly outgoing energy -- of righteous rage.

I am the history of the rejection of who I am