“Your friends, and your associates, and the people around you, and the environment that you live in, and the speakers around you - the speakers around you - and the communicators around you, are the...”

“If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.”

“First grade was - I spoke only Spanish, and second grade - probably a bit more English. And by the time I hit third grade, I was learning, of course, much, much more English.”

“I remember looking at James Joyce's journals. It was just amazing - it looked like ants had written on the page. So much writing on one page, every corner of the page was filled. Some of the lines ...”

“I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating ch...”

“Let's detox our cluttered academic brain. That's what the poet does. People call it daydreaming, detoxing our minds and taking care of that clutter. It's being able to let in call letters from the ...”

“They plot, they plot, sleeping or afoot they never let up.”

“You must become your enemy to truly understand him.”

“The police cannot be considered simply the custodians of the legal order, but must be seen as the guardians of the social order as well. That they defend it wearing blue uniforms rather than white ...”

“There is a personal sacrifice required to realize Gods passion”

“Personal Responsibility is the state of being the person who caused something to happen.”

“Writing is hard work. Attempting to write a decent story is friggin exhausting!”

“Despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.”

“You look at pictures of Nepal, push a smile button, and you think thats the same as going there.”

“If you are a beautiful lair, you are the most wanted person in the world.”