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

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.

Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.

I think if you put something in a file that says "war poems" or "love poems" that you already restrict the way in which the poem might move.

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

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 we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It’s the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.