I appreciate my my sleep In sleep my conversation is witty My home is dusted My office work is up to date The dog is even well behaved And food is on the table on time But then when I'm asleep I don't have you to clutter and confuse My hungry heart

There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy

You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.

Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.

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.