If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.

I think one of the nicest things that we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, 'Hey, I don't like white people.'

It's not a ladder we're climbing, it's literature we're producing. . . . We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.

I am a big fan of the electronic book. I hate to see the old bookstores close, but they have to reinvent themselves. I believe the First Edition bookstore will be the next thing. People will read electronically, then decide they want to own that book. The author will then be invited to the old bookstores to sign. I think books will always be with us, but they will fill a different need.

Black Poetry is not for Black People...it is for everybody

Daddy says the world is a drum tight and hard and I told him I'm gonna beat out my own rhythm.

His headstone said FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST But death is a slave's freedom We seek the freedom of free men And the construction of a world Where Martin Luther King could have lived and preached nonviolence.