I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing--I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to "fix" a poem.

I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it.

The act of making poetry is an act of hope.

A man's pursuit of knowledge is greater than his shortcomings, the limits of his vision.

What's left is palimpsest—one memory bleeding into another, overwriting it.

The experience of poetry could bring my mother back to me. Poetry offers a different kind of solace - here on earth.

What is love?/ One name for it is knowledge.

You can get there from here, though there's no going home. Everywhere you go will be somewhere you've never been. "Theories of Time and Space

When I was born here in Gulfport in 1966, my parents' interracial marriage was still illegal. And it was very hard to drive around town with my parents, to be out in public with my parents.

the wages of empire is myopia

I want to be the best advocate and promoter for poetry that I can be.

I wanted to be his life preserver, the thing that would keep him afloat. Instead, he became my anchor. And I’m tired of drowning.

An unresolved issue will be like a cancer with the potential to spread into other areas of your relationship, eroding the joy, lightness, love and beauty.

It is morally appalling for the so called liberators of South Sudan to keep liberating their own people from a war that has already been won.

It does no good to bark at the television, I said. I’ve tried it too. So he stopped.

In my career, I have played a gangster, an ex cop, a journalist and a film director. Yet, the label of a serial kisser refuses to leave me.

When you experience the light, voila, you're happy. The very nature of the light is happiness. You don't have to do anything or be anybody special.

I look for something that grabs me and that's heartfelt, and that's coming from a good place. I want to work with good actors and with directors that I can learn from.

The smallest form of life, even an ant or a clam, is equal to a human being

I think white people like to tell Asian people how they should feel about race because they're too scared to tell black people.

Life is a vapor. It passes in the blink of an eye.