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.

I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.

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

We love because it's the only true adventure.

She knows who she is, because she knows who she isn't.

I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan; you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time.