In the decades since my youth, I've witnessed the explosion of fatherless families and an exponential increase in illiteracy and crime.

We understood, growing up - 'cause it was taught in our family home, my mom and dad - to respect women, for instance. To respect yourself. That you respect your name. Those are the kind of things we were taught.

It was the understanding of the power of perception that allowed the Martin Luther King, Jr. generations to stay true to the strategy of non-violence, refusing to retaliate when every emotional instinct would justify them doing so.

One of these days, I'm going to stop learning through my errors.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

The things I need from my husband and he needs from me are minimal - respect, support when needed, kindness, love.

Families are not merely constructs of outdated convention, and traditional marriage laws were not based on animosity toward homosexuals. Rather, I believe that the traditional family structure - centered on a lawful union between one man and one woman - comports with nature and with our Judeo-Christian moral tradition.

The muse, the beloved, and duende are three ways of thinking of what is the source of poetry, and all three seem to me different names or different ways to think about something that is not entirely reasonable, not entirely subject to the will, not entirely rational.