You can't have relationships with other people until you give birth to yourself.

So much of growing up is an unbearable waiting. A constant longing for another time. Another season.

The most fundamental truth to be told in any art form, as far as Blacks are concerned, is that America is killing us.

And I cried… for all of the women who stretched their bodies for civilizations, only to find ruins.

I still hear you humming, Mama. The colour of your song calls me home. The colour of your words saying, Let her be. She got a right to be different. She gonna stumble on herself one of these days. Just let the child be. And I be, Mama.

Poetry is subconscious conversation, it is as much the work of those who understand it and those who make it.

What is the beauty of the haiku is that it is not simplistic. The beauty of the haiku I just said is very complex. It reaches all the complexities of our life on this Earth. Peace - that's a very complex idea, peace, so we can't get it as human beings.