One needs to be on guard against expecting external powers to decide when you can take yourself seriously as an artist. It can be a long wait - and lead to endless appetite.

I like to use research to enlarge the poem. And sometimes a rhetorical or syntactical gesture stitches the poem along.

It's extremely important that, as writers, we give a voice to those who don't have voices, including the other animals that we share the planet with and the places that are endangered or being lost.

Once you realize that human actions affect every bit of earth and sky, you realize that the environment isn't just what surrounds us - it's all one whole.

I am a result of what has happened on this planet - how could I find the art to say that? I can't, and yet, I am drawn to it because of the enormity of it. That seems really important.

Bringing science into poetry is one way of acknowledging some of the richest stuff that is in my cultural moment.

I've been accused of darkness by my inner light.

I don't know much about death and the sorriest lesson I've learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone's dying.

What keeps me level is the refusal to let the best of human aspirations die in the face of the challenges. I make a moral decision to be hopeful.

We're nature. Our minds are nature. Our desire to make poetry is nature.

As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.

Problems are everywhere, so are Solutions. Unfortunately, we see more of the Problems than the Solutions.-RVM

The Gospel of God is the Good News.

There are many amazing female directors that made work in more skewed times, so we should be thankful for the boundaries they pushed through.

The motion of the mind is conveyed along a cloud of meaning.~ There is this paradox that we get to meaning only when we strip the meaning from symbols.

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

May Your Swords Stay Sharp!" - Lan Pendragon

I'm always relearning things I thought I'd learned for good a while back.

I'm old enough to know better, but I'm still too young to care.

From beginning to end I worried that Ang Lee wouldn't be satisfied with my work. So I worked as hard as I could to earn his trust, because you only get a chance like this once.