I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.

VISIBILITY - You've got to find a way to make people know you're there

Art offers sanctuary to everyone willing to open their Hearts as well as their Eyes.

I try to impress upon my students the importance of looking, listening... paying attention, in other words. You must pay attention.

And like an unfaithful mate, once a car has let you down you never sort of trust it again.

I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

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.