The whole thing is this: If you don't use just basic grammar, if you don't get the language down, you're not going to have access to a tool that peop….

I am learning to look at myself differently, to see the scattered remnants of hope and dreams and collect them again..

You've got to invite Native Americans to the table, and Asians, and Chicanos. You cannot keep us in the back room anymore and give us notations on pa….

And so I pray I am today as honest with myself, with life all around me and below and above me, with all who I encounter..

Literacy is freedom, and everyone has something significant to say..

I do know that if you can name certain things and understand them, it allows you to make better choices. Unfortunately, there's so much misinformatio….

Being a human being without forgiveness is like being a guitarist without fingers or being the diva without a tongue..

How much truth can we bear? Our tolerance for carrying the truth is not very high. I mean, the slightest discomfort about truth and we run to our ref….

Understanding is the key to everything. To rage, fear, love. If you understand a situation, it's going to make you mad. Or it's going to make you fee….

Americans would have a right to go to war with the Iraqis if we could name one author from Iraq. It disturbs me that we're going to war with somebody….

People say what distinguishes us from the animals is that we think. Well, then why the hell don't we extend some compassion to those under tremendous….

I can't stand the comfort zone. So many people I know, their parents give them their homes, and they get married and have children, or whatever. That….

I emerged from the black oil pools in the forgotten house of dreams in the wild backcountry of the heart. I am heir to the sun, child of Mother Earth….

I culled poetry from odors, sounds, faces, and ordinary events occurring around me. Breezes bulged me as if I were cloth; sounds nicked their marks o….

One thing America truly does stand for is a million different ways of living. But while we enjoy the lives we have, we're so privileged. We live in a….

I sat back in my wooden chair as they signed the paperwork and stared down at the arm rests, studying the various layers of paint, the chips and crac….

We're all self-destructive when we're young. We all rebel. If we don't, there's something wrong. But when a Chicano kid's in a rebellious state, he h….

I believe it's our responsibility as citizens to get in there and not accept the constant failure of prisons to deal with racism, lack of privilege, ….

Every poem is an infant labored into birth and I am drenched with sweating effort, tired from the pain and hurt of being a man, in the poem I transfo….