Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It's a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question. Sometimes, more actually gets said through such a technique than a full frontal assault.

I am this space my body believes in.

I knew life Began where I stood in the dark, Looking out into the light.

Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.

Tonight I feel the stars are out to use me for target practice.

I excavate history. I look at lives buried under too much silence. Periods of time, like slavery, have to be revisited, reimagined, so we can move through them.

We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project.

It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.

I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems.

I think of language as our first music.

I said that love heals from inside.

Brennan's inner jaguar roared to life then with the need to protect this woman- protect my mate, must protect my mate it snarled.

Loving someone is different from being in love with someone. You can hate someone you're in love with

Flowers are the music of the earth.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.

We need to reevaluate that women who ask for a pay raise or ask for a promotion - it's actually an okay thing.

So we listen. We add up associations of people with people. When a push against Scientology starts somewhere, we go over the people involved and weed them out. Push vanishes.

Self-suppression is often necessary in the interest of truth and nonviolence.

I haven't had this much fun since the rats ate my baby sister

I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent.

I'm willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact.