I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.

You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.

We just didn't put any pressure on each other, and I think that everybody needs somebody, and I didn't do it to try to do it; it's what we [with Nina Simone] were to each other.

Mistakes are a fact of life. If you are willing to be wrong then you have earned the right to be right.

We eat up artists like there's going to be a famine at the end.

The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.

The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.