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

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

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.

If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

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.

My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.