“In the end, it only comes down to one thing: choosing the one you can’t live without.”

“You can’t hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can’t hate your origin without ending up hating yourself. You can’t hate the land, your motherland, the place that you come from, and we can’t hate Africa without ending up hating ourselves. The Black man in the Western Hemisphere—North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean—is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself that you can find anywhere on this earth.”

“It’s like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse. The one thing you can’t do is choose neither.”

“In the end ... success or failure will come down to an ethical decision, one on which those now living will be judged for generations to come.”

“You only have one day at a time to live, so live it and choose well!”

“We can’t choose our poetic fathers any more than our biological ones — but we can choose how to come to terms with them.”