It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

It's not a ladder we're climbing, it's literature we're producing. . . . We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.

Libraries...house our dreams.

There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.

My main strength as a young writer was that I had no fear of making mistakes. I knew I would and I knew I could and would learn from them.

[To write poems] I think it's important to do research, and research mostly is going to come from books, so all of your reading is potentially helpful to your poetry.