The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

I have an excuse, actually, why I've been drinking so much. I haven't said this out loud yet - this is exciting - I'm drinking for two. Thank you, wow. I mean, just for now. Somebody's being evicted.

When the facts change, I change my mind.

Elegance is not an outer quality, but a part of the soul that is visible to others.

If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.

One thing about the past. It's likely to last.

The peerless cup afloat Of the lake-lily is an urn some nymph Swims bearing high above her head.

That's how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.

Are we even now? Or do you want to rape my body as much as you’ve raped my soul? (Acheron)

I am a very spiritual person. Maybe not traditionally religious in terms of Sunday Mass every week, that sort of thing.