Learning to cultivate an awareness of the known and unknown within one's being often leads to a healthier and more realistic sense of self.

Human beings, in a sense, may be thought of as multidimensional creatures composed of such poetic considerations as the individual need for self-realization, subdued passions for overwhelming beauty, and a hunger for meaning beyond the flavors that enter and exit the physical body. A person might even be described as a self-contained multiverse.

Literary genres and techniques tend to take form in one's mind somewhat the way computer templates provide form for different computer tasks.

I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.

This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back.

Life possesses an amazing array of profoundly sad faces.

Before the thunderous clamor of political debate or war set loose in the world, love insisted on its promise for the possibility of human unity: between men and women, between blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, haves and have-have-nots, self and self.