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

My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

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 wish someone had told me that my stories are really mine to tell. In other words, anything that I think is important or that has moved me has the ability to move somebody else.