Diane Wakoski Quotes

Progress and healing involves seeing every person as not so different from ourselves.

All art to me is an empathetic act. Whoever's telling a story is trying to transfer emotion into someone else.

I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.

Try to love someone who you want to hate, because they are just like you, somewhere inside, in a way you may never expect, in a way that resounds so deeply within you that you cannot believe it.

Nobody is so weird others can't identify with them.

We are all human and I want to relate that message to all people.

I can see that everybody has their own challenges that they are dealing with. But what's so beautiful about music is that it brings people together, levels the playing field and opens people up.

We will always need to be reminded that we are human. Art gives us that.

I'm a normal person. I'm just like you and just like everyone else - I have feelings and thoughts.

At the end of the day, we are all humans.

A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.

A reading is a kind of communion. The poet articulates the semi-known for the tribe.

My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.

I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected.

People are people, and they want to know about their own experiences.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

Poetry is partly sympathy, don't you think? If it's any good, it gets people to think about others' points of view.

The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs.

The great thing about a song is that no one has to know your story. But if you tell it in a way that has clarity and means something to somebody else, then it can apply to their story.

All I want is for people, when they read my books, to feel companioned, to feel they're not alone in the world.

I want 'Flesh Of My Flesh' to be like my connection to the community, I want to say what's on my peoples' minds, soak up all their pain. I've learned that when I take it all in, I can make one brotha's pain be understood by the world.

I think, really, that the only way a person can open their heart to someone who is so much another is really by knowing them... whether that's in a classroom, or a soccer team, or a food pantry, or any of those things. I mean, we're kind of more alike than we are different.