The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.

There's racism and sexism and ageism and all sorts of idiocies. But bad news is not news. We've had bad news as a species for a long time. We've had slavery and human sacrifice and the holocaust and brutalities of such measure.

Always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by.

Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.

I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.

Blacks concede that hurrawing, jibing, jiving, signifying, disrespecting, cursing, even outright insults might be acceptable under particular conditions, but aspersions cast against one's family call for immediate attack.

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.