“What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That's 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.”

“I live every day to the fullest -- as if it might be last, as you never know when your number's up!”

“Do what you do. This Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve, Twelfth Night, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, St. Paddy's Day, and every day henceforth. Just do what you do. Live out your life and your traditions on your own terms.If it offends others, so be it. That's their problem.”

“So what if the heartaches you wrote last year isn't what you're feeling today. it may be exactly what the person in the front row is feeling. What you're feeling now, and the person you may reach with your words five years from now- that's why you write poetry.”

“You ever think about this? Every year you live, you pass the anniversary of your death. Now you don't know what day it is, of course.”

“...An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand...”