I think it's the strength of her music, using art to make a statement. I think it really is. It was not a cheap gift. The gift was an expensive gift for Nina [Simone]. Diamonds are expensive. Her music was expensive. She paid for it, but I think it's her greatest gift.

Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.

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 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.

I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.

Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.

God knows it's a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.