Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.

But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.

I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.

My father was both the person who gave me reason to learn how to fight and the one who taught me the basics of fighting. He would tell me that if it was a big fight, it would probably be uneven, it wouldn't be fair.

Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

CORE was committed to nonviolence, but I was not.

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.

That attitude that fighting is probably not fair, but you have to defend yourself anyway and damage the enemy, has been profoundly consequential as far as my political activism goes.

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.

It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me.

Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.

The courts cannot garnish a father's salary, nor freeze his account, nor seize his property on behalf of his children, in our society. Apparently this is because a kid is not a car or a couch or a boat.

Consequently, most of us really exist at the mercy of other people's formulations of what's important.

There are two ways to worry words. One is hoping for the greatest possible beauty in what is created. The other is to tell the truth.

One of the reasons I came to Berkeley was because I saw so many students of all different colors speaking so many different languages and ferociously presenting all these different views. I thought, this is the 21st century and I want to be here!

So, poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown, but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.

I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest.

My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think.

The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet.

The education of my brother and myself was of paramount importance to my parents, and in addition to their strong encouragement, they were prepared to make any sacrifice to further our intellectual development.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

I hated Chris, my brother. I would pull his hair and kick him, until one day my father gave him permission to fight back. I'll be apologizing to him for the rest of my life.

In high school and college all my friends and my brother wrestled.

I just did a picture book called The Wildest Brother on Earth, and you will find both of my children in there.

My brother and I were meditating before we were 6 years old, having to stare at the wall and chant.

I plan to go to college in Southampton, a fishery studies college. Again, my brother was down there about two years ago and he said it was great, so I'm looking forward to that.

I don't want to come off like the jealous brother who wasn't getting the attention, but it was like no one was really into me anyway. I wasn't really a priority.

As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by "survival of the fittest."

My brother Cody is 19. He wants to stay out of the limelight and become a lawyer. I want him to be an entertainment lawyer, so he can help me out!

My brother and sister are both older than I am and were born before my father went off to World War I.

Teenagers too often have to deal with loss and death. You had to cope with the untimely death of your brother; how can young people deal with such tragedies?

My favorite Oscar story was a year my brother had been nominated, my whole family went.

No one could understand the bond between me and my brother. I struggled to understand the forces that drove his soul in one direction and mine in another.

I just had to find something else to fulfill me. Always being a singer and writing, it was a blessing. My brother started making music that was the kind of music I always saw myself singing.

So, my big brother was playing guitar and I figured I'd try it too.

I, Lawrence Klein, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, as were my elder brother and younger sister.

My birth neither shook the German Empire nor caused much of an upheaval in the home. It pleased mother, caused father a certain amount of pride and my elder brother the usual fraternal jealousy of a hitherto only son.

If you want to know how your girl will treat you after marriage, just listen to her talking to her little brother.

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

I haven't seen a professional player come out of New York in over 20 years since my brother Patrick came out. Blake spent a few years in Harlem, but he moved to Connecticut when he was a kid.

I've seen the Mass For The End Of Time in concert but my brother's the more musical one really.

My brother's been producing rap music and hip-hop for maybe 10 years.

My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records.

Tell me, was it you or your brother who was killed in the war?