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?

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.

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.

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.

The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them

Do your duty, and don't swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.

Possessions are a way of turning money into problems.

Privilege is when you think that something's not a problem because it's not a problem for you personally.

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.

That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue.

Almost anything can be dealt with if people are of good will and light hearts and strong values.

So the blues player, he ain't worried and bothered, but he's got something for the worried people.

THE BIGGEST TEST FOR PARENTS IS NOT HOW THEY PARENT, BUT HOW THEY RESPOND TO DISORDER AND UNPREDICTABILITY

If people like you, they'll give you a hand. But if they trust you, they'll give you their heart. And heart to heart, we can face anything together.