It’s cool when fashion recycles itself, it’s not cool when sustainable living does because it means there was (and is as I write) a period of absolute and possibly irreversible destruction.

The words he said, too, must be human enough to bleed.

A poet could kill the dead.

Poets, like fighters, both reap the benefits of roadwork.

I’ve learned to fall like the BJJ player, to protect the body through controlling the distribution of force by slapping the mat with hands open. With hands open. Hands open. Open. O Pen.

Stories do not change, only the lives they live in do.

Like forearm veins, my interests spread in different directions and eventually led to the hands, to writing.

If pain is a pot of boiling water, humor can be the rising steam.

Fights begin and end with handshakes.

How can I stand before you in silent symbols with open palms?

The more inhuman we became the more we understood each other as humans.

There is no man in any rank who is always at liberty to act as he would incline. In some quarter or other he is limited by circumstances.

I was willing to put it at risk in order for someone to gain, in order for the situation to get better.

When a king begins to act like a king, it is not long before someone else is king! Serving is a way we can place value on one another. A wise man is a server.

If, as Steven King once wrote, 'Valleys are the dimples on the face of the earth,' then Silicon Valley is undoubtedly the deepest, most sparkling dimple of them all.

My duty is not affected by what others may or may not do to discharge their own.

I quit because I can’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.

When you're there, it's not good enough to be there.

I'll have a different answer tomorrow that I do today.

Face flushed, I shook my head and stared at my white-knuckled grip on the bed. Of all my pet peeves, condescending adults were probably at the top of the list.

Leadership is liberating people to do what is required of them in the most effective and humane way possible.