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.

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

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

Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.

Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.

And like an unfaithful mate, once a car has let you down you never sort of trust it again.

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.