My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them.

If I'm here, I'll be trying to be a better human being, a better writer, a better friend and a better beloved.

I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.

I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

Poetry gave me back my voice.