I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

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

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

Libraries are where it all begins.

What writing does is to reveal.

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.