If you can't be free, be a mystery.

I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry.

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

Anyone can tell you that how you're raised as a child has a great deal to do with how you behave as an adult and whether you have complexes or whether you need to prove yourself or all that kind of stuff and yet the mother in a traditional family who has raised a child never makes it in the history books.