We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.

The unwillingness to try is worse than any failure.

Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.

The future is in good hands.

I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.

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.

I appreciate and enjoy my age.