This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.

Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.