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" I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers. "

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" Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure. "

" I write short stories, and I wrote a play. "

" I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on. "

" The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with. "

" I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels. "

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" It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles. "

" I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem. "

" My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets. "

" I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding. "

" Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early. "

" Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. "

" What writing does is to reveal. "

" I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned. "

" My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends. "

" I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it. "

" I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about! "

" There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints. "

" You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible. "

" I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them. "

" People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable. "

" It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded. "

" When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings. "

" I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually. "

" In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things. "

" Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely. "

" I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry. "

" I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more. "

" I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer. "

" I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person. "

" Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture. "