"If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad…"

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself."

"Put it this way: I am a Negro, and I am an American. I am a poet, and I am a writer. I am a human being, and I am black. I am a man, and I am a woman. I am an old man, and I am a young man. I am a chi…"

"When a man starts out with nothing, he's got to have a lot of brass to get somewhere."

"I look at the world from awakening eyes in a black face—and this is what I see."