"Being gay isn't a choice, just like being black isn't a choice…I don't stop. I do not give up. I do not take America'…"

"Something you see in the book is my tendency to self-bully. It started when I was a gay black kid growing up in the s…"

"If you look at the poems in Prelude, you can identify the later material by identifying the poems with more white spa…"

"the farmer takes Jill down the well & all the king's horses & all the king's men can't put that baby together again c…"

"death is where jimi hendrix is, where our revolution ended up."

"There has always been something wrong wif the tesses. The tesses paint a picture of me wif no brain. The tesses paint…"

""I'm tired," I says. She says, "I know you are, but you can't stop now Precious, you gotta push." And I do."

"For all practical purposes, wheat is civilization. It produces what we euphemistically call the staff of life, a staf…"

"The Arkansawyers are of the type of the old Hoosiers, Crackers, Pikers, and the Big Smoky mountaineers. The Hoosiers …"

"this country might have been a pio neer land once. but. there ain't no mo indians blowing custer's mind with a differ…"