Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies.

Maybe the purpose of being here, wherever we are, is to increase the durability and occasions of love among and between peoples.

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.

What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart?

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.

If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable.

When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different ... we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives