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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry. "

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

" Libraries are where it all begins. "

" I thought, after the Pulitzer, at least nothing will surprise me quite that much in my life. And another one happened. It was quite amazing. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry. "

" The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings. "

" What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world! "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard. "

" 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. "

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

" Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet. "

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

" To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "