“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”

“When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.”

“Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales?If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.”

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

“Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”

“Amazing Peace: A Christmas PoemThunder rumbles in the mountain passesAnd lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.Flood waters await us in our avenues.Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalancheOver unprotected villages.The sky slips low and grey and threatening.We question ourselves.What have we done to so affront nature?We worry God.Are you there? Are you there really?Does the covenant you made with us still hold?Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hopeAnd singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,Come the way of friendship.It is the Glad Season.Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.Flood waters recede into memory.Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid usAs we make our way to higher ground.Hope is born again in the faces of childrenIt rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors.In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.We listen carefully as it gathers strength.We hear a sweetness.The word is Peace.It is loud now. It is louder.Louder than the explosion of bombs.We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.It is what we have hungered for.Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.Peace.Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,Implore you, to stay a while with us.So we may learn by your shimmering lightHow to look beyond complexion and see community.It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.On this platform of peace, we can create a languageTo translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus ChristInto the great religions of the world.We jubilate the precious advent of trust.We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.All the earth's tribes loosen their voicesTo celebrate the promise of Peace.We, Angels and Mortal's, Believers and Non-Believers,Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselvesAnd we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.Peace, My Brother.Peace, My Sister.Peace, My Soul.”

“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans — because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are. Not just how tall we are, or thin… but who we are internally… perhaps even spiritually. There’s something, which impels us to show our inner-souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.”