I don't care to be good, Sheriff. I care to be whole.

The future gets no say in who we are.

Pretend – inside your skin – you've got a friend, who's willing to give you everything you ever wanted in exchange for all you've ever been.

Stop inviting walls into wide open spaces.

What paper planes and empty seats most have in common is that they are best made by children still learning how to ride things out.

Hearts don't break, y'all. They bruise and get better.

I am standing like shoe polish on an overstocked shelf hoping that one day someone will pick me to make things better.

If you've never been rocked back by the presence of purpose this poem is too soon for you. Return to your mediocrity, plug it into an amplifier and rethink yourself.

The first time my town saw the sky it sucker-punched us in the throat, left us breathless, said, I'm gonna keep you awake some nights without touching you. You'll make it up, the pain, you always do.

If I didn't have so much of this life all wrong I would have gotten it right by now.

You are the home I point to that lives in my chest.

Have a little faith in your sons. This journey will be the making of them.

I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election.

Every tub must stand upon its bottom.

Every country in the world now needs to have its veterinary services on high alert for H5N1 to be sure they are not caught unawares.

At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art.Then life will find its very existence from the arts.

I don't trust any country that looks around a continent and says, "Hey, I'll take the frozen part."

As a society, I think older women are marginalized, but I think that has changed so much in the last twenty years.

When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what caused the disaster...I learned nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when the soup came. That's the story.

Maybe you could go backwards and forwards at the same time, but it wasn't easy. You had to want to.

Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons.