Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.
I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle...
All great achievements require time.
If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.
I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and m...
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.
Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. . . Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to b...
This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do...
Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.
The human heart...tells us that we are more alike than we are unalike.
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence—neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish—it is an imponderably valuable gift.
One person, with good purpose, can, constitute the majority.
Go, she whispered. Go. Show them you spell your name W-O-M-A-N.
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel song...
I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want...
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.
Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'