Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them - that our elected representatives aren't looking out for the interests of most Americans.
When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice.
In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance.
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.
I loved meditation. I love it because that's where you find what your voice is. You cannot really find it easily in this culture. This culture is the noisiest culture ever, ever. I think the damage that it has done to people is in that realm of silencing them. They are overwhelmed by gadgets. They don't know what to think because they're so heavily programmed about what it is that they should want and should think.
Since the age of four, I've been exploring what I can do with the written word: everything from championing literacy and youth voice to raising awareness about world hunger.
The inner voice is something which cannot be described in words. But sometimes we have a positive feeling that something in us prompts us to do a certain thing. The time when I learnt to recognise this voice was, I may say, the time when I started praying regularly.