I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.

As an African-American, as a woman I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.

Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.

We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.

If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It’s the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.

My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.