The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

I am always talking about the human condition and about American society in particular: what it is like to be human, what makes us weep, what makes us fall and stumble and somehow rise and go on from darkness into darkness and that darkness carpeted.

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.

Y’all dropped the ball and you should be shamed.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

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