Believe me, that nap is better than sitting there for three hours and nothing's coming. I've learned that even if I've slept nine hours and I just finished breakfast, if I feel sleepy when I'm in front of that computer, I'll take a nap. And it really does help.

I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.

If educators were really understanding of that, they'd say, "You know what? Forget about bilingual, we're going to do multilingual education." So children are ready for the new millennium. We're way behind compared to countries in Europe. If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture.

I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate

I was silent as a child, and silenced as a young woman; I am taking my lumps and bumps for being a big mouth, now, but usually from those whose opinion I don't respect.

I look at Thich Nhat Hanh and I look at Marshall Rosenberg, and they're more concerned about the long range. And that long range means that you have to sit down with people who don't think like you. I want to reach people who don't think like me.

I don't see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don't believe in an eye for an eye. I don't believe this is truly freedom.