If someone didn't believe in me that would kind of be a compliment in a way.

I've been writing fiction as long as I've been writing poetry. It's just that the poetry took off, and it took me a lot longer to figure out how to write a story.

Travel is something that I like to do because it gives you lots of images, and it also really makes you think about your own place in the world in a very different way.

I guess it was easier for me to find my voice in poetry than it was in fiction. I'm working on fiction again, and I find it a lot more difficult. It's a struggle. At a certain point, you have your voice and you go to it every time, so it's not like reinventing the wheel. That's the way I see it at least.

One of my problems with religion is that it's limiting in so many ways. I remember the first time I took a humanities class, I thought, I can't believe this. This is fantastic. This is what I want my life to be. When I was a young person, I did a lot of dabbling in Eastern religions, and it was very satisfying in some ways, but there's that limitation always, which I find myself bridling against.

I want a God big enough to love those who don't believe in him.

I was born in New Orleans, but I grew up in Hawaii. That was a paradise. That's a paradise I keep inside of me all the time. It's funny, I don't really write too much in poetry about Hawaii, but I published a book of stories a couple of years ago.