I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet.

Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors are mysterious apparitions who come, go, and do strange unfathomable thing in and around the child, the region's only enfranchised citizen.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

I think all poems are commissioned. They just come to me without somebody outside commissioning them. The idea comes and I will live with them 'til I get it as close to what I mean. I've never been totally satisfied. I've come close a few times.

I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.

I suggest that the great art belongs to all people, all the time--that indeed it is made for the people, by the people, to the people.

There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in Black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.