HIV is no respecter of persons. Any of us could find ourselves with the disease, and then what? We tend to stigmatize as a way to deceive ourselves about our invincibility. But it is a delusion.

I am most interested in people. I try to capture their complexity and contradiction and beauty. It does not matter where they are from.

This poet is a griot in search of a village.

When people open up and share their stories, you have a responsibility to tell these truths truthfully and with the same quest for grace and beauty that you see in them.

All memory is fiction.

Maybe that is the power of poetry. It somehow transcends news cycles, and becomes a part of our collective imagination. That is the beauty of the art form I like to play with.

I believe that all fiction is personal and all writing is at some level personal.

Latino poets, are really having a significant impact on American poetics today.

My concern is always that I can do justice to what I see and hear.

The aesthetic, as I understand it, is really about the way in which we understand beauty and speak and think about beauty.

Racist writing is a craft failure.

The instrument through which time is converted is called work.

All over the world God is opening doors of opportunity, making it possible for us to take the Gospel to millions who have never heard of Christ.

One has to be careful, whenever one tells a story about a great injustice. We are a species that loves narrative, but has been taught not to trust an individual speaker.

It's not until the very last phase that you know how good the works are going to be.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

I never stood in a public house bar and alcoholic drink never touched my lips.

Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers.

And some places you been before are so great that you don't ever mind going back. Some places you been before you don't ever want to go back, you know, like Montreal in the Winter.

The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes.

In golf, it's almost impossible to be perfect on each shot; that's the fun and challenge of golf.