Owning a gun in America is one way for conservative white males to demonstrate their anger at crime, liberalism, feminism, and modernity.
When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.
Friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go.
Racism is so extreme and so pervasive in our American society that no black individual lives in an atmosphere of freedom.
Only ways you can keep folks hating is to keep them apart and separated from each other.
I believe deeply in a common humanity. The black man belongs to the family of man. One part of that family is out of control - like a virus or cancer - and that is the white man. He and his technological society are bent on destroying the world. Everywhere the white man has gone with his empire, he has destroyed people, races, societies, cultures, and in the course of it, has sterilized himself. He is completely the mechanical man: without heart, without soul. He is the Tin Man of The Wizard of Oz. But I don't believe that all the white people in the world are no good.
Love stretches your heart and makes you big inside.
People have always thought that I wasn't ambitious. They judged by appearances and were fooled. I was competitive. I wanted success and was willing to work for it.
The poet is a bird of strange moods. He descends from his lofty domain to tarry among us, singing; if we do not honor him he will unfold his wings and fly back to his dwelling place.
The more you win, the better you're gonna get. It grows on itself.
Oprah Winfrey gives you the stage? Shut your mouth. I said, 'I'm sorry for taking over your show. ' She said, 'No, that's why we have you here. '