Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me...my lonely is mine.

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me.

Black people's music is in a class by itself and always has been. There's nothing like it. The reason for that is because it was not tampered with by white people. It was not on the media. It was not anywhere except where black people were. And it is one of the art forms in which black people decided what is good in it. Nobody told them. What surfaced and what floated to the top, were the giants and the best.

Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. the lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glance of the lover’s inward eyes.