I think the more we know the better we are. I mean not just facts. The more we know about each other, the closer we are to learn something about our selves.
It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.
My son is the best thing that ever happened to me. And through me – to a lot of people.
My hope is that we develop enough courage to develop courage. To try to have, try to learn to treat each other fairly, with generosity and kindness.
Light and shadow are opposite sides of the same coin. We can illuminate our paths or darken our way. It is a matter of choice.
One of the saddest things in the world is to see a cynical young person.
There’s racism and sexism and ageism and all sorts of idiocies. But bad news is not news. We’ve had bad news as a species for a long time. We’ve had slavery and human sacrifice and the holocaust and brutalities of such measure.
The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labour.
Inscribed on the temple of Apollo.
If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.
The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.
Everything costs and costs the earth.
Anyone of us can be a rainbow in somebody’s clouds. I want the University of Cincinnati to be a rainbow in the clouds. The University of Cincinnati is really a possibility of hope; it is a rainbow.
Tragedy, no matter how sad, becomes boring to those not caught in its addictive caress.
Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.
I know something better is on the road for me.
Had I not had my grandmother, who dared to be my rainbow in the clouds, I would have been just another sexually abused barefoot black girl on the roads of Arkansas.
Just because I am wheelchair-bound doesn’t mean I don’t get around.
Have enough courage to love.
Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there’s not a shred of anything superfluous.