It's very human to try to put things into boxes, and it's hard for us to reconcile with grey areas, and yet somehow, that's the area I find the most poetic, the juiciest.
I have spent seven of the 12 years I have been married a victim of political persecution. I must be the first male spouse being held hostage by a regime. I accept this, as Pakistan has traditional elements who find it hard to reconcile with a man whose wife works and who other men salute perforce of her office.
I am attracted to characters who are in worlds where they don't belong and who have great ambitions that they imagine will somehow reconcile themselves with the world and make things right.
I receive the flak via nasty blog posts, letters, usually coming from very religious people who cannot reconcile how I could share spiritual message and at the same time teach about money.
It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act.
I think it's always difficult to reconcile the needs of art and business.
Defending human rights should be an important objective of foreign policy, and that, too, will sometimes be hard to reconcile with an economic agenda, especially when it comes to dealing with rich but repressive players like China and Russia.
My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is.