I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something

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.

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.

Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.