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

... if your heart and your honest body can be controlled by the state, or controlled by community taboo, are you not then, and in that case, no more than a slave ruled by outside force? What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart, and that attempts to dictate the public career of an honest human body?

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

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

In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience.

To believe is to become what you believe.

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.