I Learned A Long Time Ago The

I Don't Think Modesty Is A Very Good Virtue, If It Is A Virtue At All. A Modest Person Will Drop The Modesty In A Minute. It's A Learned Affectation.

I Always Knew From That Moment, From The Time I Found Myself At Home In That Little Segregated Library In The South, All The Way Up Until I Walked Up The Steps Of The New York City Library, I Always Felt, In Any Town, If I Can Get To A Library, I'll Be Okay. It Really Helped Me As A Child, And That Never Left Me. So I Have A Special Place For Every Library, In My Heart Of Hearts.

The Real Difficulty Is To Overcome How You Think About Yourself.

I Am Always Talking About The Human Condition And About American Society In Particular: What It Is Like To Be Human, What Makes Us Weep, What Makes Us Fall And Stumble And Somehow Rise And Go On From Darkness Into Darkness And That Darkness Carpeted.

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.