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If You're Creating A Slave Situation, You Would Almost Never Bring Women. And If We Look At Slavery For Example, We Look At The Greeks And The Romans, Right? It Was Always Men. They Never Brought Any Women. Because Women Carry The Seeds Of The Revolution, Right? And If You Have The Men By Themselves, Then You Can Do What The French Did With The Blackfeet, Which Is Breed Them Out.

-Nikki Giovanni

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If You're Creating A

Nikki Giovanni

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If You're Creating A Slave Situation, You Would Almost Never Bring Women. And If We Look At Slavery For Example, We Look At The Greeks And The Romans, Right? It Was Always Men. They Never Brought Any Women. Because Women Carry The Seeds Of The Revolution, Right? And If You Have The Men By Themselves, Then You Can Do What The French Did With The Blackfeet, Which Is Breed Them Out.

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I Hope I Die Warmed By The Life That I Tried To Live

Iife/personality Must Be Taken As A Total Entity. All Of Your Life Is All Of Your Life, And No One Incident Stands Alone.

I Am Proud Of The Hip Hop Generation. They Are Good Business People And, Actually, Good People. It's Strange That The Only Time The Major Press Talks About Them Is When Someone Gets Killed Or Does Drugs Or Something; Yet These Are The Same Press People Who Made Heroes Out Of The Mafia And Other Crooks, You Know.

She Knows Who She Is, Because She Knows Who She Isn't.

I Hope That, Reading 'rosa,' People Will Remember Their Own Family And Friends And Talk About What They Did And Did Not Do.

Family And Friends

I Try To Impress Upon My Students The Importance Of Looking, Listening... Paying Attention, In Other Words. You Must Pay Attention.

The World Is Not A Pleasant Place To Be Without Someone To Hold And Be Held By.

Being Black And Poor Is, I Think, Radically Different From Being Anything Else And Poor. Poor, To Most Blacks, Is A State Of Mind. Those Who Accept It Are Poor; Those Who Struggle Are Middle Class.

You Must Be Unintimidated By Your Own Thoughts Because If You Write With Someone Looking Over You Shoulder, You'll Never Write.

You Know A Person Is Having A Severe Personality Crisis If You See A High School Class Ring On A Finger Beyond The First Semester In College. Male Or Female. It's A Big Sign Saying Nothing Has Mattered To My Life Since Senior Year.

Poets Can Tell The Truth As They See It. It’s The Author’s Story, The Author’s Voice.

Telling The Truth

The Nature Of Tragedy And Accident Is That We Cannot Predict.

White People Really Deal More With God And Black People With Jesus.

We Black Women Are The Single Group In The West Intact. And Anybody Can See We're Pretty Shaky. We Are, However (all Praises), The Only Group That Derives Its Identity From Itself.

I Have Not Tried To Tell The People Anything. I Have Shared My Views With The People But I Have Not Tried To Lead Or Correct Them, Assuming They Need Correction.

You're Only As Good As Your Last Book.

If You Don't Understand Yourself You Don't Understand Anybody Else.

Storytelling Is How History Is Passed. It's What Our Ancestors Did, It's What Everybody's Done. It Has To Come Back Into A Story Because Otherwise, It's Stuck In This Book And It's Boring And It's Academic And I'm Not Against Intelligence And I'm Not Against Education, I Don't Want To Be Misunderstood, But We Have Tell The Stories To Our Young People A Little Bit Early And History Gives Us A Lot Of Things.

Schools Should Be Integrated By Race And By Class.

Facts Are Only Tools To Gain Control Over Yourself And Other People.

I Am A Big Fan Of The Electronic Book. I Hate To See The Old Bookstores Close, But They Have To Reinvent Themselves. I Believe The First Edition Bookstore Will Be The Next Thing. People Will Read Electronically, Then Decide They Want To Own That Book. The Author Will Then Be Invited To The Old Bookstores To Sign. I Think Books Will Always Be With Us, But They Will Fill A Different Need.

You Have To Use What You Have In Order To Get What You Need And The People Can Not Be Rich Unless Somebody Is Rich. The Hip-hop Generation Has Carried More People With It Than Any Other Enterprise Black Americans Have Had.

I Think Speeches And Fruit Should Always Be Fresh.

Who I Really Am Keeps Surprising Me.

If You Were A Pure Bolt Of Fire-cutting The Skies I'd Touch You-risking My Life-not Because I'm Brave Or Strong, But Because I'm Fascinated By What The Outcome Would Be.

I Think Life Is Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day. For Those Who Grew Up With Cotton Candy The Old-fashioned Way, It Is Very Delicate. Pre-made Cotton Candy That Has Preservatives Is Not Nearly As Good Or True. True Cotton Candy Is Sugar, Color, And Air And It Melts Very Quickly. That Was The Metaphor - It Can't Be Preserved, It Can't Be Put Aside, It Can't Be Banked. It Has To Be Experienced, Like Life.

Life Is A Process Where People Mix And Match, Fall Apart And Come Back Together.

I’ve Not Learned The Acceptable Way Of Saying You Fascinate Me...i’ve Not Even Learned How To Say I Like You Without Frightening People Away-

God Knows It's A Sign Of A Really Sick Mind To See Grown People, Adults With Responsibilities, Wearing Class Rings.

If Everybody Became A Poet The World Would Be Much Better. We Would All Read To Each Other.

I Think We're Always In Love. It's That Simple. And It's Important To Remember That Love Doesn't Have Anything To Do With Sex. It's Two Different Things. Being In Love Is The Happy Part. I Was Teasing My Gentleman, "we Know That You're In Love When You Cook For Us." It's True. When Men Cook For You, They're In Love.

Nina Simone's Music Is Incredibly Honest. That's Like Saying, "why Does Jesus' Word Still Stay Around?" It's Incredibly Honest And It's Good.

History Is Wonderful. We Have So Much We Can Learn If We Would Quit Making Ideology Out Of History, And Just Deal With What Happened.

The Only Way You Can Grow Is To Let Yourself Make Mistakes And Create Contradictions. As We Learn New Things, Some Of Our Old Attitudes Will Change.

The Ability To Take Pride In Your Own Work Is One Of The Hallmarks Of Sanity.

Self Confidence

The Catchword I Use With My Classes Is: The Authority Of The Writer Always Overcomes The Skepticism Of The Reader.

Go Barefoot And Be Warm All The Time Not Only When You Go To Bed And Sleep

The Trip To Mars Can Only Be Understood Through Black Americans. I Say, The Trip To Mars Can Only Be Understood Through Black Americans.

Educational Progress Is A National Concern; Education Is A Private One.

If Now Isn't A Good Time For The Truth I Don't See When We'll Get To It.

I Am Totally Fascinated By People And Our History As I Understand And Continue To Explore It. People Have So Much To Give And So Far To Go And Yet We Have Given And Gone A Great Distance. It's Really Just Interesting To Ask: Why Not? And See Where That Takes Me.

Poetry And Music Are Very Good Friends. Like Mommies And Daddies And Strawberries And Cream - They Go Together.

I Knew Stokely [carmichael] And Them, But When You Got To That, You Saw That Nina Simone Started To Take Up Their Burden. She Started To Preach For Them. She Was Taking On The Burden Of "i Want To Tell The People."

I Appreciate And Enjoy My Age.

If I Can't Have What I Want . . . Then My Job Is To Want What I've Got And Be Satisfied That At Least There Is Something More To Want

The More You Love Someone The More He Wants From You And The Less You Have To Give Since You've Already Given Him Your Love.

We [black People] Have Always Used Our Creativity To Battle And We're Not The Only Ones. Black Americans Are Certainly Leaders In That Simply Because We Were Denied Education And Dealt With Enforced Illiteracy. But People Seem To Always Forget That Literacy Is Not The Only Way Of Learning Things Or Conveying Knowledge.

A Lot Of People Refuse To Do Things Because They Don't Want To Go Naked, Don't Want To Go Without Guarantee. But That's What's Got To Happen. You Go Naked Until You Die.

Floating To Shore...riding A Low Moon...on A Slow Cloud.

We Eat Up Artists Like There's Going To Be A Famine At The End.

His Headstone Said Free At Last, Free At Last But Death Is A Slave's Freedom We Seek The Freedom Of Free Men And The Construction Of A World Where Martin Luther King Could Have Lived And Preached Nonviolence.

We Love Because It's The Only True Adventure.

I Always Loved English Because Whatever Human Beings Are, We Are Storytellers. It Is Our Stories That Give A Light To The Future. When I Went To College I Became A History Major Because History Is Such A Wonderful Story Of Who We Think We Are. English Is Much More A Story Of Who We Really Are.

Love Is The Offspring Of Spiritual Affinity And Unless That Affinity Is Created In A Moment, It Will Not Be Created For Years Or Even Generations.

Death Is A Slave's Freedom.

We All Have Our Muses. My Grandmother And My Mother Are The People I Write For. I'll Never Have To Worry About Who Buys My Work, Or Who Likes It, And Who Doesn't. The People Who I Want To Be Proud Of Me Already Are.

I Wish That She Had Had A Black Loon Because I Don't Think That Nina [simone] Did. I Have Always Had - I've Been Very Fortunate - A Group Of Little Old Ladies That I Love And Who Love Me, And Who Turned And To Whom I Turn At Different Times.

It's Really Just Interesting To Ask: Why Not? And See Where That Takes Me.

But Nonviolence Was Never For The Oppressor; It Was For The Oppressed.

Everyone Understands That Love Comes In Many Different Packages And Is Used In Many Different Ways. You Cannot Love Beyond Your Years, Nor Can You Fail To Love Beneath Them... In Other Words, I Think You Get The Love You Need When You Open Your Heart.

Black Poetry Is Not For Black People...it Is For Everybody

I Am Proud Of The Hip Hop Generation. They Are Good Business People And, Actually, Good People.

We Are All Either Wheels Or Connectors. Whichever We Are We Must Find Truth And Balance, Which Is A Bicycle. Trust And Balance Are Also Essential To True Love.

Before You Jump Off A Bridge Or Hang Yourself Or Be Unhappy Please Consider: Live For Yourself; Those Who Hate You Have No Purchase

Poems Don't Have To Rhyme... Poems Are About Beauty And Emotion; In Other Words Poems Are About Feelings.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Learning About Bird Watching.

I Used To Dream Militant Dreams Of Taking Over America To Show These Whitefolks How It Should Be Done I Used To Dream Radical Dreams Of Blowing Everyone Away With My Perceptive Powers Of Correct Analysis I Even Used To Think That I'd Be The One To Stop The Riot And Negotiate The Peace Then I Awoke & Dug That If I Dreamed Natural Dreams Of Being A Natural Woman Doing What A Woman Does When She's Natural I Would Have A Revolution.

Life Is A Marvelous, Transitory Adventure.

America May Not Be The Best Nation On Earth, But It Has Conceived Loftier Ideals And Dreamed Higher Dreams Than Any Other Nation. America Is A Heterogeneous Nation Of Many Different People Of Different Races, Religions, And Creeds. Should This Experiment Go Forth And Prosper, We Will Have Offered Humans A New Way To Look At Life; Should It Fail, We Will Simply Go The Way Of All Failed Civilizations.

Poetry Is Like Air. It's One Of The Necessary Things. Everyone Benefits From Poetry. And As You Know, Poetry Is International. There Are Only Two Things That Are Truly International, Poetry And Wine.

I Appreciate My My Sleep In Sleep My Conversation Is Witty My Home Is Dusted My Office Work Is Up To Date The Dog Is Even Well Behaved And Food Is On The Table On Time But Then When I'm Asleep I Don't Have You To Clutter And Confuse My Hungry Heart

I Don't Have A Life-style, I Have A Life.

Writing Is A Conversation With Reading; A Dialogue With Thinking. All Conversations With Older People Contain Repetition. Some Of The Ideas Mean A Lot To Me, Just Interesting, So I Both Embrace And Attack The Ideas Because I Found Them, Well, Delightful.

My Work Is A Part Of Me And I Know It. I Have No Reason To Try To Pick One Part Of Me Out From The Rest. I Only See My Work, Or Rather I Should Say I See My Work Only Telling My Part Of The Human Experience.

If You're A Writer, The Answer To Everything Is Yes.

Deal With Yourself As A Individual, Worthy Of Respect And Make Everyone Else Deal With You The Same Way.

I Move On Feeling And Have Learned To Distrust Those Who Don't.

I Am Ever Fascinated By The Human Experience And By, Actually, Human Beings.

Human Experience

The Unwillingness To Try Is Worse Than Any Failure.

I Think That Too Many Strangers Were In Her [nina Simone's] Life, And Not Enough People That She Knew And Loved.

You Must Invent Your Own Games And Teach Us Old Ones How To Play.

When Younger, I Thought One Of The Particulars Of Being "homo Sapiens" Was To Communicate. I Have Not Learned Not To, Though I Am Cautious When I Try.

I Think One Of The Nicest Things That We Created As A Generation Was Just The Fact That We Could Say, 'hey, I Don't Like White People.'

Writers ... I Think ... Live On That Fine Line Between Insanity And Genius.

I Prefer Her [nina Simone's] Jazz Period Much More So Than Her Folk Period.

I Really Don't Think Life Is About The I-could-have-beens. Life Is Only About The I-tried-to-do. I Don't Mind The Failure But I Can't Imagine That I'd Forgive Myself If I Didn't Try.

We Just Didn't Put Any Pressure On Each Other, And I Think That Everybody Needs Somebody, And I Didn't Do It To Try To Do It; It's What We [with Nina Simone] Were To Each Other.

Show Me Someone Not Full Of Herself And I'll Show You A Hungry Person.

No One Needs To Teach You To Be Mean; We Need To Be Taught To Be Kind.

I Always Like Summer Best

There Is Always Something To Do. There Are Hungry People To Feed, Naked People To Clothe, Sick People To Comfort And Make Well. And While I Don't Expect You To Save The World I Do Think It's Not Asking Too Much For You To Love Those With Whom You Sleep, Share The Happiness Of Those Whom You Call Friend, Engage Those Among You Who Are Visionary And Remove From Your Life Those Who Offer You Depression, Despair And Disrespect.

Black Americans Should Be Given Credit For Finding Probably The Perfect Weapon; The Weapon Of The Song. And That Song Continues. Most Holocausts Don't, So They Have This Bitterness Left Over. The Phenomenon Of The World, As Far As Black Americans Are Considered, Is That We Are Not A Bitter People.

I Think It's The Strength Of Her Music, Using Art To Make A Statement. I Think It Really Is. It Was Not A Cheap Gift. The Gift Was An Expensive Gift For Nina [simone]. Diamonds Are Expensive. Her Music Was Expensive. She Paid For It, But I Think It's Her Greatest Gift.

Some Say We Are Responsible For Those We Love. Others Know We Are Responsible For Those Who Love Us.

African American

I Am So Hip Even My Errors Are Correct

African American

There Are Things You Stand Up For Because It’s Right.

Rage Is To Writers What Water Is To Fish.

We Have A World To Conquer...one Person At A Time...starting With Ourselves.

I Used To Go Up To Her House. She Lived Upstate [in New York] And I Lived In Manhattan; You're Living In A Lot Of Noise And My Career Was Being Built. For Me To Spend Time With Nina [simone] Is To Spend A Lot Of Quiet Time.

We Are Less Lonely When We Connect. Art Is Connection.

The Poet Can Only Write The Poems; It Takes The Reader To Complete The Meaning.

Mistakes Are A Fact Of Life. If You Are Willing To Be Wrong Then You Have Earned The Right To Be Right.

We Are Better Than We Think And Not Yet What We Want To Be.

Most Of My Books Are A Two-year Project. I Tend To Follow My Heart And My Mind And Research Materials Where They Take Me.

If Culture Was A Railroad, I Can See The Tracks Running From The Spirituals To The Hip Hop Nation.

Follow Your Image As Far As You Can No Matter How Useless You Think It Is. Push Yourself.

There're Two People In The World That Are Not Likeable: A Master And A Slave.

If You Are Sitting There Waiting For Someone To Tell You How Wonderful You Are, You'll Never Get Anything Done. Women Need To Get Over Being Women. I'm Tired Of That Socialization Of Women; That We Are Always Supposed To Be Sitting Around Pleasing Somebody.

There Are Some Things We Do Simply Because The Doing Is A Success.

You Do What You Can With What You Have. You Have To Work The Edges Whatever They Are. The Main Thing Is Keeping Your Integrity.

Visibility - You've Got To Find A Way To Make People Know You're There

We Need To Make Sure Our Children Travel To See Things. Not Necessarily Long Distances But At Least Out Of The Neighborhood. On A Train. A Boat. An Airplane.

There Is No Such Thing As Writer's Block. There Is Only Not Enough Information. If You Can't Write, Learn Something.

You Must Be Unintimidated By Your Own Thoughts.

We Obviously Need The Truth. We're Living In A Country Of Lies.

Photographers Direct The Eye Toward A Particular Object. We Who Write, One Hopes, Are Directing The Heart And The Soul.

And Sometimes I Sit Down At My Typewriter And I Think Not Of Someone Cause There Isn't Anyone To Think About And I Wonder Is It Worth It

Favorite Poems Are Like Favorite Children. We Definitely Have Them But We Never Tell As The Others Would Have Their Feelings Hurt.

Black Love Is Black Wealth

The Future Is In Good Hands.

And You Will Understand All Too Soon That You, My Children Of Battle, Are Your Heroes

Hip-hop Is A Cultural Expression - It's Embracing.

A White Face Goes With A White Mind. Occasionally A Black Face Goes With A White Mind. Very Seldom A White Face Will Have A Black Mind.

All Systems Require Myths For Their Longevity.

Just As Nature Abhors A Vacuum, Humans Resist Change. Change Will Occur; Vacuums Will Be Filled.

Once You Know Who You Are, You Don't Have To Worry Anymore.

Baseball Is Already The World's Most Tranquil Sport. It Is Probably The Only Active Sport Where You Are Not Seriously Required To Be Alive To Play.

In The Name Of Peace They Waged The Wars Ain't They Got No Shame

The Job Of The Architect Becomes More Difficult In This Secular Age. Where Once He Had A God To Extol, He Now Has Humans Like Himself; Where Once He Had "he," He Now Has "she" And "they.

A Lot Of People Resist Transition And Therefore Never Allow Themselves To Enjoy Who They Are. Embrace The Change, No Matter What It Is; Once You Do, You Can Learn About The New World You're In And Take Advantage Of It.

Who I Am Really Keeps Surprising Me.

I Want To Be Clear About This. If You Wrote From Experience, You'd Get Maybe One Book, Maybe Three Poems. Writers Write From Empathy.

Don't Want To Be Near You For The Thoughts We Share But The Words We Never Have To Speak.

African American

Words Of Wisdom

[my] Books Are Like Puppies And Children: You Love Each One For Different Reasons. I Don't Actually Have A Favorite Because, If I Were Honest, I'm Always More Excited About What Is Coming.

I Would Put Books On Par With Chocolate, Because A Good Book Is Delicious.

I Love You Because No Two Snowflakes Are Alike, And It Is Possible, If You Stand Tippy-toe, To Walk Between The Raindrops.

We Believe 'peter Rabbit' Because Beatrix Potter Believes It. You Have To.

The Only Advice [for New Writers And Poets] I Can Offer Is To Be Yourself: Not The Self Someone Else Wants You To Be, But The Self You Are. Enjoy Yourself And Your Life. But Most Of All Travel And Eat. That's How We Learn.

Language Instruction Should Start In The First Grade. Writing, Also.

I Had A Really Nice Childhood; I Had Great Parents. I Earned My Allowance By Washing Dishes, And In The Summer I Earned My Allowance By Working In Daddy's Garden.

Schools Should Serve Breakfast, Lunch And An Afternoon Snack. No Sugared Drinks, No Fast Type Food.

I Am Honest; I Try To Be Truthful. I Like People And Wish Us Well. We Are Not Always Deserving Of Our Own Best Wishes.

School Should Be Eleven Months Of The Year.

We Write Because We Believe The Human Spirit Cannot Be Tamed And Should Not Be Trained.

Libraries...house Our Dreams.

We Must Invest In Tomorrow. And Pay Our Teachers For Teaching As We Pay Our Coaches For Coaching.

My Dream Is A Red Dress Above My Knees High-heel Red Sandals And Me Coming Over The Top The Music Booming Hi Howie I Will Say With A Lovely Smile I Don't Want To Play The Game I Want To Be It.

A Lot Of People Refuse To Do Things Because They Don't Want To Go Naked... . We As Black People, We As People, We As The Human Species Have Got To Get Used To The Fact We're Not Going To Be Right Most Of The Time, Not Even When Our Intentions Are Good. We've Got To Go Naked And See What Happens.

And Like An Unfaithful Mate, Once A Car Has Let You Down You Never Sort Of Trust It Again.

If You're Creating A Slave Situation, You Would Almost Never Bring Women. And If We Look At Slavery For Example, We Look At The Greeks And The Romans, Right? It Was Always Men. They Never Brought Any Women. Because Women Carry The Seeds Of The Revolution, Right? And If You Have The Men By Themselves, Then You Can Do What The French Did With The Blackfeet, Which Is Breed Them Out.

I Am Of The Generation Of Segregation. Black Lives Matter Is Post. I Said Today, And I Will Say All The Time, "if Nina [simone] Were Here, She'd Have Her Black Lives Matter [t-shirt] On." I Think They're Great Kids. They Don't Need Me Or Anybody Else To Tell Them What To Do.

A Lot Is Yet To Be Enjoyed. I'd Like To Stomp Grapes For Wine. Go To Antarctica. Have Dinner With Venus Williams Who Is The Greatest Tennis Player Ever.

[to Become A Poet] The Most Important Thing Is To Pay Attention. The Next Would Probably Be To Read; It's So Important To Pay Attention. It Keeps You From Being Bored, And I Might Add It Keeps You From Being Boorish.

School Buildings Should Be Opened And Used Twenty Four Hours A Day.

Style Has A Profound Meaning To Black Americans. If We Can’t Drive, We Will Invent Walks And The World Will Envy The Dexterity Of Our Feet. If We Can’t Have Ham, We Will Boil Chitterlings; If We Are Given Rotten Peaches, We Will Make Cobblers; If Given Scraps, We Will Make Quilts; Take Away Our Drums, And We Will Clap Our Hands. We Prove The Human Spirit Will Prevail. We Will Take What We Have To Make What We Need. We Need Confidence In Our Knowledge Of Who We Are.

Poetry Is The Most Informative Of All Of The Arts Because Everything Comes Down To Poetry. No Matter What It Is We Are Describing, Ultimately We Use Either A Metaphor; Or We Say "that's Poetry In Motion." You Drink A Glass Of Wine And Say, "that's Poetry In A Bottle." Everything Is Poetry, So I Think We Come Down To Emotional Information. And That's What Poetry Conveys.

Now, Everything I Do, I Do Because I Want To. And I Believe The Best Is Yet To Come.

Best Is Yet To Come

I'm Glad I Understand That While Language Is A Gift, Listening Is A Responsibility. (u.s. Poet And Writer, 1943- )

Art Offers Sanctuary To Everyone Willing To Open Their Hearts As Well As Their Eyes.

Sacred Cows Make Very Poor Gladiators.

I Was Responding To One Thing For The Woman I Knew, And There's Another Thing For What Did She Give, Right. She [nina Simone] Was A Great Teacher.

Mistakes Are A Fact Of Life. It Is The Response To The Error That Counts.

I’m A Big Fan Of History—applying The Lessons As Well As The Joys And Sadness. If We Pay Attention, We Would See How We Affect Each Other. In Terms Of Time, We Are Not That Far From One Another. If We Were To Look Back A Century, It Would Seem Like A Long Time; But, If We Look At It By Decades Then It’s Only 10 Years, And By Generations It’s Only Five.

We Are Strong Enough To Stand Tall Tearlessly, We Are Brave Enough To Bend To Cry, And We Are Sad Enough To Know That We Must Laugh Again.

Fanatics Are, For One Thing, Boring And, For Another, Unreliable. They Tend To Burn Out Just When You Need Them.

My Main Strength As A Young Writer Was That I Had No Fear Of Making Mistakes. I Knew I Would And I Knew I Could And Would Learn From Them.

I Just Think She Was A Wonderful Woman. What I Think Of When I Think Of Nina [simone] Is Someone That I Could Relate To, Who Didn't Want Anything From Me, That Could Relate To Me Because I Didn't Want Anything From Her. It Was Nice.

One Stands, In Fact, In Awe Of The Constitution Of The United States, Though It Is An Idea And Not Quite A Reality.

Violence Is Like Money In The Bank; It's Only Helpful If You Don't Have To Use It.

Poetry Is The Most Mistaught Subject In Any School Because We Teach Poetry By Form And Not By Content.

I Grow Old Though Pleased With My Memories The Tasks I Can No Longer Complete Are Balanced By The Love Of The Tasks Gone Past I Offer No Apology Only This Plea: When I Am Frayed And Strained And Drizzle At The End Please Someone Cut A Square And Put Me In A Quilt That I Might Keep Some Child Warm And Some Old Person With No One Else To Talk To Will Hear My Whispers And Cuddle Near

In Law School They Teach You That Everything Is A Contract; Well, In Poetry Everything Is A Narrative.

Nothing Improves Your Writing, I Think, As Much As Your Keeping Writing.

For Most Of My Life, I've Thought Of Myself As Pretty Cool.

Art Is Not For The Cultivated Taste. It Is To Cultivate Taste.

Black Love Is Black Wealth And They'll Probably Talk About My Hard Childhood And Never Understand That All The While I Was Quite Happy

I Do Not Understand Why Any Poet Or Writer Would Run For Office; That's A Different Sense Of Who You Are. I'm Just A Poet. I Am As Truthful As I Can Be. That Makes Me An Artist. I Heed The People; I Do Not Lead The People.

Everything Will Change. The Only Question Is Growing Up Or Decaying.

Daddy Says The World Is A Drum Tight And Hard And I Told Him I'm Gonna Beat Out My Own Rhythm.

What's The Difference Between Dragging A Black Man Behind A Truck In Jasper, Texas, And Beating A White Boy To Death In Wyoming Because He's Gay?

I'm An Old Storyteller. I Tell The Story. It's About The Story.

Poetry Is Music Though, Unfortunately, Not All Music Is Poetry. Because Music Has Other Carriers To Take Its Message - Beats, Lyrics, Singers, Bass Players - Anyone In Music Can Rise To Make A Major Statement But In Poetry There Are Only Words To Do The Work. And They Do Sometimes Have To Sweat.

It's Not A Ladder We're Climbing, It's Literature We're Producing. . . . We Cannot Possibly Leave It To History As A Discipline Nor To Sociology Nor Science Nor Economics To Tell The Story Of Our People.

It Is Not Who You Attend School With But Who Controls The School You Attend.

If I Can't Do What I Want To Do, Then My Job Is To Not Do What I Want To Do. It's Not The Same Thing, But It's The Best Thing I Can Do.

I Like What They're Doing. I Think They're Doing A Good Job, And I Know That A Lot Of People Are Upset By Them. These Are Great Young Men And Women, And They're Bold, And They Are Saying To America, "something's Going To Change." I'm Very Proud Of Them.

If I Could Come Back As Anything - I'd Be A Bird, First, But Definitely The Command Key Is My Second Choice.

The Poet Melvin B. Tolson Once Said "a Civilization Is Judged Only In Its Decline." That Made Sense To Me. I Would Imagine The Same Is True For Poets And Tennis Players.

Ever Been Kidnapped By A Poet If I Were A Poet I'd Kidnap You Put You In My Phrases And Meter.

War Is Not A Jobs Program.

[to Write Poems] I Think It's Important To Do Research, And Research Mostly Is Going To Come From Books, So All Of Your Reading Is Potentially Helpful To Your Poetry.

Everybody That Loves Freedom Loves Harriet Tubman Because She Was Determined Not Only To Be Free, But To Make Free As Many People As She Could.

Young People Coming Up Who Are Having Difficulty With Their So-called Celebrity Need To Get Back Into Their Lives. It's Your Life And You Can't Let The Fact That You Do Something Pretty Good Take Away The Joy Of It.

I Am A Huge Fan Of The Black Woman. I Never Hesitate To Recommend Her When Times Are Bad Or Things Go Wrong.

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