Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.

I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.

We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.

Most of those who died did not die of hunger but of hatred. Feeling hatred diminishes you. It eats at your from within and attacks the immune system. When you have hatred inside you, it always crushes you in the end.

I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter.

I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.

An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused.