This Quote is taped over my Desk

When at last I wrote my first words on the page, I felt an island rising beneath my feet like the back of a whale. As more and more words emerged, I could finally rest: I had a place to stand for the first time in my life. The island grew, with each page, inhabited by people I knew and mapped with the life I lived.
- Jimmy Santiago Baca, from Working in the Dark; Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio