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.

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

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.

If the poem is so moving that even if you have no experience in that particular setting be it 1920's Harlem let's say. You still are so moved that you can put yourself in that position. That means that the writer has managed to go beyond the personal and touch the humanity in all of us and it's really a blast to read it because I realize how that this does hold true for the truly great poems.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

Libraries are where it all begins.

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.