When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book."

"The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories."

The Word of fire burns today
On the lips of our prophets in an evil age.

"I want my careless song to strike no minor key; no fiend to stand between my body's Southern song -- the fusion of the South, my body's song and me."

"White folks needs what black folks got just as much as black folks needs what white folks got, and we's all got to stay here mongst each other and git along, that's what."