My mother - my stepmother, really, she herself have been what they call an elocutionist. And she was the one who first encouraged me to write poetry, because she used to read it to us. And then when I began to write when I was nine years old, my first poem was published in the Amsterdam News. I called it "The Graveyard."

A trustworthy marriage has weathered temptation and anger and jealousy, resentment, self-righteousness and a little bit of selfishness. When you get over and get through that, then maybe you can see the light to love.

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.

You have to learn how to be married. You have to learn to love somebody.

Art is in the process of redefining our relationships to each other ... The creative minds are bubbling, bubbling, and I know the soup that's coming up next time is going to feed a lot more of us.

You meet all kinds of people that help put life in perspective and turn the horror into some kind of lesson or avenue of awakening that lives with you all your days.

I never thought about myself as an activist when we were coming along. I wasn't a joiner. You know, I love the people I love. I didn't care whether - they could be a Democrat, Republican, communist, you know, and anything but a racist.