The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.

Because white men can’t police their imaginations, black men are dying.

I want to believe that in any relational moment a person understands that the other person in front of them is just another human being.

You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you.

Define loneliness? Yes. It's what we can't do for each other.

Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.

Sometimes the art pieces I gravitate toward speak to me in terms of narrative, at other times they speak to me in terms of mood.

The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much / to you.

If you admit to being racist, it says you acknowledge that you are being driven by projections and stereotypes that were formed in the creation of our country. Racism is deeply rooted in America.

Where is the safest place when that place / must be someplace other than in the body?

I am invested in keeping present the forgotten bodies.

The joy of reading is sacred pleasure.

... for when a man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offenses, but never resentful of great ones.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.

I want Scott to look at me the way Patch looks at you.

Everyone wants to be tested and challenged. Everyone would like a good, honest fight to exhaust their frustrations.

I don't have no favorite rock bands. I'm a fan of rock music though.

One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unknowing human filler in your wide shot.

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

Press plays "gotcha"; limit press briefings.

We have our arts, the ancients had theirs... We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact.