If I'm going to a new country, I try to learn something about the language and the culture, so I don't just go bumbling over things.

It's very hard for adults to maintain respect and romance so that a love affair can be sustained over years.

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.

Not everything you do is going to be a masterpiece, but you get art there and you try and sometimes it really happens. The other times you’re just stretching your soul.

Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales? If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.