I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.
Criticism is painful when it’s not done with love.
If she come, I be happy. If she don’t, I be content.
HELPED are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child.
HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.
It didn’t take long to realize I didn’t hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don’t mean nothing if you don’t ast why you here, period.
The good news may be that Nature is phasing out the white man, but the bad news is that’s who She thinks we all are.
In my opinion and experience, imperialists of all nations and races will tell us anything to keep us fighting. For them.
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence – as it saves most writers who live in ‘interesting’ oppressive times and are not afflicted by personal immunity.
You must run around like a crazy person or walk sedately honoring the dead.
I’m the kind of woman that likes to enjoy herselves in peace.
Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.
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.