I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political.

If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.

We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative.

[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who - for whatever reasons - are less conscious of what they are living through. It is as though the risks of the poet's existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.

A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being.