Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.

Poetry, above all is a series of intense moments ­ its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.

Arise O lion-heart! Awake, O great soldier! Misery has come upon the world. It is wailing for help. It is wailing for redemption. Won’t you do anything, my friend!

Nostalgia is the intimate refuge of every man and every woman in a world seemingly gone mad.

A child can die even in the safest place on earth- its mother's womb!

My only chance is to pretend it's a day like any other

My wife had an uncle who could never walk down the nave of an abbey without wondering whether it would take spin.

Chocolate is a vegetable. Honest.

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.

I am the unarmed black kid who maybe needed a hand, but instead was given a bullet.

We are supposed to share the gospel. So, I believe it can actually be a sinful thing to not do it.

I love San Francisco. It would be a perfect place for a honeymoon.