There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

My mother carried on and supported us; her ambition had been to write poetry and songs.

Back then, I couldn't have left a poem a year and gone back to it.

But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.

What's clear - and exciting - is that communication for social change is growing.

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

What the Olympics and other mega-events have shown is that the significant investment required to host an international games successfully has the power to transform a region, and even a nation.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.