I was taught from a young age that many people would treat me as a second-class citizen because I was African-American and because I was female.

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money still less as is apt to happen when these are abandoned of race but of age.

Middle age is when your old classmates are so grey and wrinkled and bald they don't recognize you.

At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry I was listening to European classical music.

If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power knowledge and sexuality since the classical age it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Every age has its own poetry in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation a race a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age sex color class or religion children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.