Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.

What you hope for, you also fear.

Activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet.

If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

It has been proved that the land can exist without the country - and be better for it; it has not been proved ... that the country can exist without the land.

In order to be able to live at all in America I must be unafraid to live anywhere in it, and I must be able to live in the fashion and with whom I choose.