I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice exploitation humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.

I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn't mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it but they're happy if they do get it.

The low points I had all helped make up my character so I probably wouldn't want to do away with them because I like being flawed and I like having them help me grow and change and become better and stronger.

I wouldn't change anything. I've made mistakes but thanks to those mistakes I've learned.

I don't like definitions but if there is a definition of freedom it would be when you have control over your reality to transform it to change it rather than having it imposed upon you. You can't really ask for more than.

So here's the question: Without a change in leadership why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

I went through life like an idiot for a great deal of the time saying there's nothing I would change. That was a very arrogant thing to say. There's a lot I would change. There are people I would have steered clear of.

Well I do think when there are more women that the tone of the conversation changes and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn't mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that you've forgotten high school.

Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for or any work at all. So here's the question: Without a change in leadership why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

Those issues are biblical issues: to care for the sick to feed the hungry to stand up for the oppressed. I contend that if the evangelical community became more biblical everything would change.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character would you slow down? Or speed up?

Of course there is no question that Libya - and the world - will be better off with Gaddafi out of power. I along with many other world leaders have embraced that goal and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.

If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat or cure or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.