We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.