You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts.

I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of "I want to tell the people."

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.

Baseball is already the world's most tranquil sport. It is probably the only active sport where you are not seriously required to be alive to play.

I have not tried to tell the people anything. I have shared my views with the people but I have not tried to lead or correct them, assuming they need correction.

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 need to make sure our children travel to see things. Not necessarily long distances but at least out of the neighborhood. On a train. A boat. An airplane.