When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness... all the good things.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

I do not believe that the accident of birth makes people sisters and brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood are conditions people have to work at. It's a serious matter. You compromise, you give, you take, you stand firm, and you're relentless...And it is an investment. Sisterhood means if you happen to be in Burma and I happen to be in San Diego and I'm married to someone who is very jealous and you're married to somebody who is very possessive, if you call me in the middle of the night, I have to come.

When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else.

This is what I am learning, at 82 years old: the main thing is to be in love with the search for truth.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Life sometimes gives you a second chance.