I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.

I think I had gotten messages really young that poetry wasn't for me, that it was for, basically, some dead white men. My experience and my intellect was on the outside of understanding that. I think that's what's so destructive.

I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.

I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.

Sometimes it seems as though not a moment has moved, but then you look up and you're already old or you already have a household of kids or you look down and see your feet are miles and miles away from the rest of you—and you realize you've grown up.

Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.

Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.