The crisis of black politics can only be resolved through the development of multiclass, multiracial, progressive political structures.
Next to blood relationships, come water relationships.
Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do - or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so.
To dream a garden and then to plant it is an act of independence and even defiance to the greater world.
I was a new writer and I was supposed to write all the time, wasn't I? I had not yet discovered that there are times when one can't write, one shouldn't write, times for thought, for deepening, or just reading, or simply living.
Perhaps it was Maggie, perhaps not. In solitary moments magpies will perch on a branch and mutter soft soliloquies of whines and squeals and chatterings, oblivious to what goes on around them. It is one of those things, I suppose, intelligence now and then does, must in fact now and then do, must think, must play, must imagine, must talk to itself. . . . What, finally, intelligence could be for: finding your way back.
There is always something rough and tumble about planting - because with our clumsy implements we must reach from our atmospheric element down into another, down into the darkness of the soil.
I read a Bruce Lee quote that shifted how I'm trying to live my life right now. He said, "Some targets are only meant to be aimed at. " Right? And I took that to mean a shift for myself from goal orientation to path orientation.
My open mindedness is a product of where I came from. When you work in labor relations for a long part of your career you have to embrace the idea that an exchange of ideas can produce creative solutions.
I don't think people want to look at problems. They want a continuous narrative, an optimistic narrative. A narrative that says there's a present and a future - and what was in the past no longer exists.
Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.