I support all people on earth who have bodies like and unlike my body.

During the Gulf War, I remember two little third grade girls saying to me - after I read them some poems by writers in Iraq - 'You know, we never thought about there being children in Iraq before.' And I thought, 'Well those poems did their job, because now they'll think about everything a little bit differently.'

I Still Have Everything You Gave Me It is dusty on the edges. It is slightly rotten. I guard it without thinking. I focus on it once a year when I shake it out in the wind. I do not ache. I would not trade.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

My mother used to tell me when I went somewhere, "Please leave your foolishness at home." But how could I do that? It was stuck on me.

... the real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to make a larger circle.

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