If I cannot offer some relief to our world, if I cannot inspire our generation to join me, then I feel I am a complete waste of space. This constant fear of feeling irrelevant in our society has been the catalyst behind all my efforts and passions for as long as I can remember.

There's a condensed softness about the Albanian people, and I've witnessed examples of their hospitality.

English was my fourth language. I arrived, I enrolled in public school, as a child, I believe I was about six years old when we finally landed in Michigan. And I was initially put in special education because I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the English language because I was listening to Hungarian and Albanian and German. My mind broke down like I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the fourth language.

My experiences there truly defined who I am to this day as far as my humanitarian work because I was a refugee in Albania.

As poets, our lamentations are glorious, filled with the virtues angles would learn to envy.

I feel every medium of art needs to heal to some degree. It can't live in it's own void, and this came from my earliest experiences as a young refugee.

I just don't know how to stitch words in a predictable way sometimes. It's a weird instinct I've developed.