Language instruction should start in the first grade. Writing, also.

Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.

I am so hip even my errors are correct

White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.

[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.

Life is a marvelous, transitory adventure.

I think we're always in love. It's that simple. And it's important to remember that love doesn't have anything to do with sex. It's two different things. Being in love is the happy part. I was teasing my gentleman, "We know that you're in love when you cook for us." It's true. When men cook for you, they're in love.