If you're creating a slave situation, you would almost never bring women. And if we look at Slavery for example, we look at the Greeks and the Romans, right? It was always men. They never brought any women. Because women carry the seeds of the revolution, right? And if you have the men by themselves, then you can do what the French did with the Blackfeet, which is breed them out.

I am honest; I try to be truthful. I like people and wish us well. We are not always deserving of our own best wishes.

When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being "Homo sapiens" was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.

We are all either wheels or connectors. Whichever we are we must find truth and balance, which is a bicycle. Trust and balance are also essential to true love.

I wish that she had had a black loon because I don't think that Nina [Simone] did. I have always had - I've been very fortunate - a group of little old ladies that I love and who love me, and who turned and to whom I turn at different times.

[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.

You're only as good as your last book.