Visualizing how you want to be is [an] effective way to move toward your goal.

Allow yourself to release the emotions you have struggled all your life to contain.

There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one.That is spirituality.

There is a comfort in knowing that you don’t have to pretend anymore, that you are going to do everything within your power to heal.

What would people look like if we could see them as they are, soaked in honey, stung and swollen, reckless, pinned against time?

It's impossible to feel good about yourself if you are doing things that you aren't proud of. . . . It's essential that you . . . [do] things you can respect and admire.

I live in Santa Cruz. I moved here in 1974 and couldn't leave.

Everyone has the right to tell the truth about her own life.

Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

So much inspires me. People living their lives with courage, beauty of all kinds, nature in all its aspects, people I love and people I hardly know, and, of course, other poets.

Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak first from me to myself and then from me to you.

Writers need faith, or else we can never trust the action of our words!

...If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood—but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum...

I want to reach back into my history with a grade-school pink eraser, scrubbing away my decisions like mistakes on a math test. Too bad I drew my mistakes in ink.

One thing they do not teach you in college is what you will actually be doing in a career of your choosing.

The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.

I just crushed Stranger Things. It's got one of my favorite actors, David Harbour. And obviously Breaking Bad and stuff like that.

War, hatred, and violence all spring from one infernal idea: that one person, race, creed, or culture is better than another.

The telephone is virtual reality in that you can meet with someone as if you are together, at least for the auditory sense.

I just see myself as a short, dumpy guy with bad feet, and I'm passionate.

Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.