Iife/personality must be taken as a total entity. All of your life is all of your life, and no one incident stands alone.

My main strength as a young writer was that I had no fear of making mistakes. I knew I would and I knew I could and would learn from them.

[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.

Once you know who you are, you don't have to worry anymore.

The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That's how we learn.

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

I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people. It's strange that the only time the major press talks about them is when someone gets killed or does drugs or something; yet these are the same press people who made heroes out of the Mafia and other crooks, you know.