"If you conquer the bread problem, that gives you at least a chance to look around at the others." Notes from a Trip to Russia, p. 34

"I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile wordplay that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean—in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight." Poetry Is Not a Luxury, p. 37

"Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought." Poetry Is Not a Luxury, p. 37

"We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and transpose them into a language so they can be shared." Poetry Is Not a Luxury, p. 37

"The fact that we are here and that I speak is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference...