The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.

The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer

As an African-American, as a woman I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.

Poetry of all the forms of literature I think is the most suited for the digital age and for the shorter attention spans and all of that. It Twitters very easily, some lyric poems and it's very easy to zip a poem to someone, so that's one of the things I think is wonderful about poetry in the digital age.