I am a stranger, learning to love the strangers around me

As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language; every human use of words that is joyful, or honest or new, because experience is new... But as a Black poet and writer, I hate words that cancel my name and my history and the freedom of my future: I hate the words that condemn and refuse the language of my people in America.

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.

suicide is absolute, and if you think you will survive by hiding who you really are, you are sadly misled: there is no such thing as partial or intermittent suicide. You can only survive if you - who you really are - do survive.

Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.

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

Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine.