Rita Dove

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

My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.

Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.

I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.

It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles.

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.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.