Quote collection
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"I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues."
"The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight."
"Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops."
"Pretty women wonder where my secret lies."
"'God put the rainbow in the clouds, not just in the sky'... It is wise to realize we already have rainbows in our clouds, or we wouldn't be here. If the rainbow is in the clouds, then in the worst of time, there is the possibility of seeing hope... We can say 'I can be a rainbow in the cloud for someone yet to be.' That may be our calling."
"A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there."
"Ritie, don't worry 'cause you ain't pretty. Plenty pretty women I seen digging ditches or worse. You smart. I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind."
"Life is a glorious banquet, a limitless and delicious buffet."
"Laugh...It's the sweetest thing one can do for oneself and one's fellow human beings."
"All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood."
"We are all human; therefore, nothing human can be alien to us."
"Look what you've already come through! Don't deny it. You've already come through some things, which are very painful. If you've been alive until you're 35, you have gone through some pain. It cost you something. And you've come through it. So at least look at that. And have a sense to look at yourself and say, "Well, wait a minute. I'm stronger than I thought I was.""
"The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach."
"I keep hitting the escape button but I am still here!"
"Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it."
"If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls."
"To those who are given much, much is expected."
"I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn't run away - I rose right where I'd been knocked down. And then that's how you get to know yourself. You say, hmm, I can get up!"
"I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind."
"I am serious, so I laugh a lot. You need to laugh. You don't laugh enough. I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh."