I believe that love is the single, true prosperity of any moment.

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.

I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.

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.

As I think about anyone or anything -- whether history or literature or my father or political organizations or a poem or a film -- as I seek to evaluate the potentiality, the life-supportive commitment and possibilities of anyone or any thing, the decisive question is always where is the love?

Sometimes we become so sophisticated we have to read the New York Times in order to figure out whether it's a hot or a rainy day.

Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires.