"Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home."

"First fight. Then fiddle."

"When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water."

"Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words."

"I've always thought of myself as a reporter."

"When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else."

"I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker."

"Poetry is life distilled."

"Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical guise."

"Don't let anyone call you a minority if you're black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You're not less than anybody else."

"Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that's going on, how could I stop?"

"What I'm fighting for now in my work... for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project."

"A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers."

"I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge."