Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.

Sometimes there’s no one to listen to what you really might like to say at a certain moment. The paper always listens.

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.

It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.

You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.

Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.

Getting over what you did to me is not why I get out of bed anymore.