When life descends into the pit I must become my own candle Willingly burning my self To light up the darkness around me.

Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself, actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something, no maybe junior and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

War is a dead end, literally. And, what is more, we simply can't afford it. Not morally, and not financially. How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.

My life is not to be somebody else's impact - you know what I mean?