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.

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

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

In fact, sometimes traveling the world is a way of not writing a poem, but it's the quality of experience. It's being able to experience something and when you begin to write about it be able to apply the tools that you need for writing.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.