Soft you day, be velvet soft, My true love approaches, Look you bright, you dusty sun, Array your golden coaches. Soft you wind, be soft as silk My true love is speaking. Hold you birds, your silver throats, His golden voice I'm seeking. Come you death, in haste, do come My shroud of black be weaving, Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet, My true love is leaving.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

When I want to think about what would be the right thing to do, the fair thing to do, the wise thing to do, I can just think of my grandmother. I can always hear her say, "Now sister, you know what's right. Just do right!"

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

People will never forget how you made them feel.

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.

In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.