In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways."

"Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?"

Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie.

"As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language."

"As I am a poet I express what I believe, and I fight against whatever I oppose, in poetry."