We were not made to eternally weep.

The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?

We shall not always plant while others reap

The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me.

For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.

Fear is the most prodigious enemy of our soul

You know, sometimes even when two people love each other the universe still conspires against them, forces them apart.

I covet solitude and storms…and rain, with its geography of dark silence and distance

You can't be taught to be brainy. You've either got it or you don't.

I have tried 99 times and have failed, but on the 100th time came success.

Writing does for me what giving milk does for a cow.

Authority that is not confirmed by true reason seems weak. Whereas true reason does not need to be confirmed by any authority.

Never meet trouble half-way.

A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.

Emotions of the sould should be watched, regulary examined, and kept well balanced.