You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you.'

No husband of mine will say, "I could have been a drummer, but I had to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is." Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure.

We seem to be always on cusps. Women come out of the burkah, the niqab, purdah, the closet, then go back in again. Of course, what we need do is to value the happy freedom of all beings.

In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment.

A story can take you through a whole process of searching, seeking, confronting, through conflicts, and then to a resolution. As the storyteller and the listener, we go through a story together.

I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I'm not, I'm not retarded.

Reading Ngo Tu Lap's poems, terrible nostalgia wells up in me- nostalgia for a lost time and a far-gone country, nostalgia for people I've loved, and for creatures of forests and rivers. I feel gratitude too. War is over. Peace arrives with these beautiful poems.