Sonia Sanchez Quotes & Sayings

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

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. — Sonia Sanchez

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

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? — Sonia Sanchez

No. Don't never go looking for love girl. Just wait. It'll come. Like the rain fallin' from the heaven, it'll come. Just don't never give up on love. — Sonia Sanchez

And I cried ... for all of the women who stretched their bodies for civilizations, only to find ruins. — Sonia Sanchez

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

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

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. — Sonia Sanchez

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

your hands
humming hurricanes
of beauty. — Sonia Sanchez

I shall become, I shall become a collector of me. And put meat on my soul. — Sonia Sanchez

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. — Sonia Sanchez

In order to be a true revolutionary, you must understand love. Love, sacrifice, and death. — Sonia Sanchez

The words loved me and I loved them in return. — Sonia Sanchez

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

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. — Sonia Sanchez

Art ... reacts to or reflects the culture it springs from. — Sonia Sanchez

I write to keep in contact with our ancestors and to spread truth to people. — Sonia Sanchez

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. — Sonia Sanchez

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

How to dance
in blood and
remain sane? — Sonia Sanchez

It is midnight
no magical bewitching
hour for me — Sonia Sanchez

The most fundamental truth to be told in any art form, as far as Blacks are concerned, is that America is killing us. — Sonia Sanchez

Come windless invader
I am a carnival of
Stars, a poem of blood. — Sonia Sanchez

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.' — Sonia Sanchez

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. — Sonia Sanchez

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