My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I felt the whole world was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any aisle and smell wisdom.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.

The important thing is not to survive, but to live.

I went to art school when I was little.

A dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right.

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.

Come back here so that I may brain thee!

We must be unanimous; there must be no pulling different ways; we must hang together.

Consumerism diverts us from thinking about women's rights, it stops us from thinking about Iraq, it stops us from thinking about what's going on in Africa - it stops us from thinking in general.

Normal birth to me should not be numb from the waist down and waiting for the doctor to tell you to push. There's a reason we feel it. There's a reason we need to feel it.

The human heart is always drawn by love.

In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry.