“As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.”

Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.

If a woman doesn’t give herself permission, who will?

No matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.

I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.

When you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.

What a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you

When you have to teach yourself how to say sounds, when you have to be highly concerned about pronunciation, it gives you a certain awareness of sonics, of the auditory experience.

It was so incredible meeting Lady Gaga. I mean I’m gaga for Gaga, literally. We kind of just each flew to each other like magnets after the ceremony ended and we were both just crying and hugging.

Poetry is – it’s an art form, but, to me, it’s also a weapon, it’s also an instrument. It’s the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that’s a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice.

It wasn’t until I was named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. in high school though that I officially began calling myself a poet. I just always loved writing, period.

We know. We believe. And we act, because it is our civic duty.

When they tell you to go back to where you come from, tell them proudly that this is where you come from.

I was writing since I can remember – I just didn’t know it was poetry yet, or that writing could be a career.

I was born early, along with my twin, and a lot of times, for infants, that can lead to learning delays.

But as for the future, I foresee a world which is more creative, more open, more loving, more ecologically friendly, more honest about its history and progress, and I think a lot of those contributions will be made by young people.

Whatever you give out in life is what you receive back in life.

But real life doesn’t travel in a perfect straight line; it doesn’t necessarily have that ‘all lived happily ever after’ bit. You have to work on where you’re going.

I wanted to see what no one had yet observed, even if I had to pay for this curiosity with my life.

People will laugh at me, but when they ask me to make a wish for the next life, I will say I want the same parents, same brother and sister, same wife, same friends.

You have a number of choices. You could continue to always fight against people who are really distractions. They’re people in the cheap seats of life. Or you can do what you went there to do.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

A love too much will either give you a person for life or a lesson for life.

Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for living and surviving is good. He who follows the fact cannot go astray, while he who has no reverence for the fact wanders afar.