[To write poems] I think it's important to do research, and research mostly is going to come from books, so all of your reading is potentially helpful to your poetry.

I had a really nice childhood; I had great parents. I earned my allowance by washing dishes, and in the summer I earned my allowance by working in daddy's garden.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, humans resist change. Change will occur; vacuums will be filled.

Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.

War is not a jobs program.

Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.

Being Black and poor is, I think, radically different from being anything else and poor. Poor, to most Blacks, is a state of mind. Those who accept it are poor; those who struggle are middle class.