There were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So you watch yourself about complaining. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

You don't need another person, place or thing to make you whole. God already did that. Your job is to know it.

You don't have to tell everything you know, but let what you do say be the truth as you understand it.

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.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs... I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

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.

Try, start always at home. This is my encouragement to all writers, start at home. All virtues and vices begin at home, and then spread abroad.