Rumi is astounding, fertile, abundant, almost more an excitable library of poetry than a person.

One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through the entire culture; that is why suburban children want rap music.

The best presenters have conversations with their audiences.

We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.

The sibling society is the flattening out of the previously democratic society.

I think that poetry is important when you are shipwrecked, when the ordinary structures that hold you up are gone.

I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore.