Let me just say, at once: I am not now nor have I ever been a white man. And, leaving aside the joys of unearned privilege, this leaves me feeling pretty good.

Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires.

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.

Maybe the purpose of being here, wherever we are, is to increase the durability and occasions of love among and between peoples.

Overall, white men run America. From nuclear armaments to the filth and jeopardy of New York City subways to the cruel mismanagement of health care, is there anything to boast about?

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

To tell the truth is to become beautiful.

If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable.

The sun's rays don't bother me. No they cast down such a wonderful heat. Masking beauty, by a terrible fate.

All truth is very ordinary. It is peoples' fantasies of what is true that is so extraordinary.

I ran track in high school. I was a fragile young man, personally and physically. I tried football. That didn't work out; I broke my collarbone. But I always loved running.

I'm a footballer, I don't think past next Saturday.

The money paid at consumption is paid by everybody, including illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers.

I grew up watching American movies. My favorite movies have always been American, since as long as I can remember. I always had this huge respect for American filmmakers and American actors.

I think every fiction writer, to a certain extent, is a schizophrenic and able to have two or three or five voices in his or her body. We seek, through our profession, to get those voices onto paper.

How very beautiful and consoling our faith is! For the little work we do here on earth it promises in return all the joys of assured happiness.

When we see the shameful fortunes amassed in all quarters of the globe, are we not impelled to exclaim that Judas' thirty pieces of silver have fructified across the centuries?

The man who is deserving the name is the one whose thoughts and exertions are for others rather than for himself.