I have never been contained except I made the prison.

No single living entity really influenced my life as did my father ... He lived as if he were poured from iron, and loved his family with a vulnerability that was touching.

For the span of my memory, this has been a city of opposing wills.

Who can be born black and not exult!

The not so simple Truth is that we must be psychologically free in order to resist and we must resist in order to be free, and all of this requires an understanding of what bondage has been, of what it continues to be and of its ramifications for the future.

I try for a poetic language that says, This is who we are, where we have been, where we are. This is where we must go. And this is what we must do.

Idiom is larger than geography it is the hot breath of a people singing, slashing, explorative. Imagery becomes the magic denominator, the language of a passage, saying the ancient unchanging particulars.