Sonia Sanchez Quotes

What I'm trying to do is to tell young people that I teach them how to breathe before I teach the haiku. That one breath, that one breath, because the haiku keeps you alive. It keeps you going. If you learn how to breath the haiku, you learn how to breathe. If you learn how to breathe, you're much healthier.

The black artist is dangerous. Black art controls the 'Negro's' reality, negates negative influences, and creates positive images.

All poets, all writers are political. They either maintain the status quo, or they say, 'Something's wrong, let's change it for the better.'

The first day i shot dope
was on a sunday.
i had just come
home from church
got mad at my mother
cuz she got mad at me. u dig?

I probably have not killed anyone in America because I write, I've maintained good controls over myself by writing.

3.
i have told
you my name
so there is
tomorrow.
4.
see me through
your own eyes
i am here.

So much of growing up is an unbearable waiting. A constant longing for another time. Another season.

How to dance
in blood and
remain sane?

You can't have relationships with other people until you give birth to yourself.

Let me wear the day
Well so when it reaches you
You will enjoy it.

What is the beauty of the haiku is that it is not simplistic. The beauty of the haiku I just said is very complex. It reaches all the complexities of our life on this Earth. Peace - that's a very complex idea, peace, so we can't get it as human beings.

What i need is traveling minds talktouch kisses spittouch you swimming upstream.

I cannot tell the truth about anything unless I confess being a student, growing and learning something new every day. The more I learn, the clearer my view of the world becomes.

Zora Neale Hurston said fear is the greatest emotion and I said, 'No my dear sister.' Fear will make us move to save our own skins. Love also makes us save ourselves, but it will make us move to save others as well.

The joy of poetry is that it will wait for you. Novels don't wait for you. Characters change. But poetry will wait. I think it's the greatest art.

Poetry is subconscious conversation, it is as much the work of those who understand it and those who make it.

I still hear you humming, Mama. The colour of your song calls me home. The colour of your words saying, Let her be. She got a right to be different. She gonna stumble on herself one of these days. Just let the child be. And I be, Mama.