We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

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.

If you're a human being, you can attempt to do what other human beings have done. We don't understand talent any more than we understand electricity.

If you have a song to sing, who are you not to open your mouth and sing to the world?

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them.

My son is the best thing that ever happened to me. And through me - to a lot of people.