The male role models I had all seemed to have been in the military. My father served in the army. My uncle was in the Marine Corps. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII. There weren't any career soldiers in my family, but when I was young it seemed like a way of arriving at adulthood.

I guess I find the boundaries between poetry and prose to be somewhat permeable.

One of the things my service in Iraq did give me was this freedom from fear of failure or any kind of expectations that I had to take a standard path.

It's not just: you get off the plane, you're back home, everything's fine. Maybe the physical danger ends, but soldiers are still deeply at risk of being injured in a different way.

We need to make sure we have in every school teachers trained and qualified to make sure every child, including children with different learning styles, succeed.

Our school systems have to realize that everybody doesn't learn the same way, and no one learns without some emotional support.

Reading is as much a part of life as any part, and it's life itself. And it allows us to live other lives that we might not have lived if we hadn't picked up those books.

The more education a woman has, the wider the gap between men's and women's earnings for the same work.