We must invest in tomorrow. And pay our teachers for teaching as we pay our coaches for coaching.

i hope i die warmed by the life that i tried to live

We are all either wheels or connectors. Whichever we are we must find truth and balance, which is a bicycle. Trust and balance are also essential to true love.

I hope that, reading 'Rosa,' people will remember their own family and friends and talk about what they did and did not do.

I do not understand why any poet or writer would run for office; that's a different sense of who you are. I'm just a poet. I am as truthful as I can be. That makes me an artist. I heed the people; I do not lead the people.

Being Black and poor is, I think, radically different from being anything else and poor. Poor, to most Blacks, is a state of mind. Those who accept it are poor; those who struggle are middle class.

Show me someone not full of herself and I'll show you a hungry person.