Poetry, I have discovered, is always unexpected and always as faithful and honest as dreams.
But it ain’t easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain.
I am not convinced that men and women were ever meant to share the same house, though some people can do it beautifully.
The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.
Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.
In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.
I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.
For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.
My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.
HELPED are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass.
I’m the most stubborn person I know.
In our particular society, it is the narrowed and narrowing view of life that often wins.
Artists are messengers whose responsibility is to unite the world – a faith that will lead not to destruction but to transformation.
Creation is a sustained period of bliss.
Wish for nothing larger Than your own small heart.
Just because I don’t harass it like some peoples us know don’t mean I ain’t got religion.
No song or poem will bear my mother’s name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother’s stories.
Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.
I know what I’m thinking bout, I think. Nothing. And as much of it as I can.
You a low down dog is what’s wrong. It’s time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.