“Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.”

“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.”

“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.There is no happiness like mine.I have been eating poetry.”

“It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.”

“Poetry has isolated me from the world more than it has connected me to it.”

“It is true that many creative people fail to make mature personal relationships, and soem are extremely isolated. It is also true that, in some instances, trauma, in the shape of early separation or bereavement, has steered the potentially creative person toward developing aspects of his personality which can find fulfillment in comparative isolation. But this does not mean that solitary, creative pursuits are themselves pathological....[A]voidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioural disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life was not entirely, or even cheifly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships.”