The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language.

The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.

Be what you are. Give What is yours to give. Have Style. Dare.

We have to learn how to live with our frailties. The best people I know are inadequate and unashamed.

The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.

You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray.

What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.

Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.

I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.

The question, love, is whether you want me enough to take the risk.

We might not get to choose who we’re born as or where we come from, but only you can decide what becomes of you.

If certain Jewish communities had distinctive qualities, they were due to history, not biology.

I see the American experience as being defined by the immigrant paradigm of rupture and renewal: rupture with the old world, the old ways, and renewal of the self in a bright but difficult New World.

Islam has always been a part of America’s story.... And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States.

Models are to be used, not believed.

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation.

I'd rather be known for my accomplishments, and for things that I really do take pride in, rather than known for this doll-like image I had when I was a child.

I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.

Learn to be comfortable with the concept of infinity, and see yourself as an infinite being.