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" I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day. "

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" Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine. "

" I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things. "

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

" 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. "

" Libraries are where it all begins. "

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

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

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

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

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

" To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet. "

" All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself. "

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

" 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. "

" I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step. "

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

" One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits. "

" 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. "

" If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer. "

" I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age. "

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

" Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor. "

" 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. "

" The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now. "

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

" The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something. "

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

" Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature. "

" For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art. "

" If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level. "