"To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white."
"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
 
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
 
"To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white."
 
"A lot of people think or believe or know they are being - but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not being. And poetry is being - not knowing or believing or thinking."
- From "A poet's advice", first published as a letter to high school students at Ottawa Hills High School
 
"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."
 
"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. "
 
"The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead."