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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Libraries are where it all begins. "

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

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

" 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. "

" It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate. "

" 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! "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

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